A Professorial Call to (Rhetorical) Arms and Various Links
A chance for tenured professors to hoist their flag and declare themselves in favor of Republicans
Howdy everyone! Sometime next week I hope to get around to writing up some empirical data about Republicans being better than Democrats, with evidence from a variety of state rankings on a number of different issue areas. In the meantime, here are a few things I have written and some interesting links and what not.
A quick side-note, one of my main writing clients is running low on our project budget for the year. This usually happens in late November/December and is not a huge deal, but it happened sooner than expected this year. That being said I am on the lookout for any writing/ghost writing/research gigs, so I would be very grateful if anyone could let me know of any opportunities they might come across. I can be emailed at zyost81@gmail.com.
Libertarians Need to Get Real About Politics/Professor Statement 2024
Dan Klein and I authored a very large essay at Fusion arguing that Libertarians should vote Republican come November. In 7k words we address a number of issues dealing with left and right, Rothbard and Hayek, French political history, and numerous other juicy fun things.
https://www.fusionaier.org/post/libertarians-need-to-get-real-about-politics
Fusion invited replies to our piece and published responses by Peter Suderman, Geoffrey Kabaservice, and Michael Munger. Dan and I replied to each here: https://www.fusionaier.org/post/fear-not-lesser-evil
In a similar vein, Dan Klein has put together a statement, authored by him and Daniel Mahoney, for tenured professors to declare their support for Republicans this November. Dan explains the reasoning of the statement here:
At this website you can find a link to sign or share the statement, as well as some supporting links.
https://lesserevil.info/
Media Appearances
Last week I was on the Jenna Ellis radio show discussing foreign policy. My slot starts around the 34 minute mark: https://afr.net/podcasts/jenna-ellis-in-the-morning/2024/august/worldview-matters-kamala-harris-vs-donald-trump/
War, Economy, and State, the foreign policy podcast I cohost with the Mises Institute has been folded into Radio Rothbard. Not much will change other than that the monthly episode will now be a Radio Rothbard episode and Tho Bishop will be in the conversation as well. Here is the most recent episode:
The Trump Assassination Attempt/Harris/Polling
While it is now old news that might as well have happened a decade ago as far as the media seems to be concerned, on July 13th Trump was almost assassinated about a 30 or so minute drive from my house. That was pretty wild and I was shocked and couldn’t sleep well that night I was so shaken. Had the assassin, who lived about a 20 minute drive from my house in the other direction, succeeded, I have no idea what would have happened, but it wouldn’t have been good.
But Trump did survive, seemingly miraculously by a mere smidgen. I have killed running deer with a 30-06 at around 75 or so yards in the woods, so 150 yards from a prone position overlooking a wide open field is not a difficult shot to make. It is unclear why the shooter seemingly aimed from Trump’s head rather than his trunk. Perhaps he was rushed by the local police trying to climb onto the roof, or perhaps he wanted to blow Trump’s head off on live TV and all the spectacle that would generate. Who knows. But other than nicking Trump’s ear, he missed, him but killed a bystander and seriously wounded two other of my fellow Western Pennsylvanians.
Then, as everyone saw, but many have tried to forget, Trump got up, pumped his fist in the air, and yelled “fight!”.
Truly a picture for the history books.
Once what had happened finally sank in I realized that I had gone from reticently planning to vote for Trump to being an enthusiastic supporter, faults and foibles and all. No matter how much material wealth we pile on top of ourselves, deep down we are all the same humans as our ancestors who chose leaders who demonstrated the strength needed to lead and defend the village from the roving pillaging barbarian cannibals who prowled the darkness. In the course of a few days my entire orientation towards him changed.
What followed was a rather fun and upbeat week of the RNC, where the feeling of triumph continued and one might be tempted to think that Trump had received the Mandate of Heaven, especially when contrasted to Biden.
Then Biden dropped, or rather was pushed, out and the media went wild, finally able to plausibly forget the previous week had ever happened. The past several years of reports on how Harris was a disaster who everyone else in the administration disliked and was so horrible to work with had to go down the memory hole, and was replaced with an enormous PR pitch to make Harris seem like the best thing since sliced bread. This was a bit breathtaking, given how loathsome and irritating I find her (“imagine a 4 year long HR meeting” is how I sum up what her administration would look like) and I was a bit baffled at how she had a bump in the polls and betting markets.
My incredulity led me to suspect that this fake enthusiasm for such a horrible candidate would not be able to be sustained until November, and thankfully it seems that I was right, at least so far.
After a brief Harris bump, we see Trump has reemerged as the favorite on Polymarket:
With PA going back to toss up:
In the national polling, Trump tends to be behind by a few points, but that is irrelevant. He is once again competitive in every swing state:
A poll released yesterday by Newsweek has the following headline:
It will be interesting to see if RFK’s presumed endorsement of Trump tonight will move any numbers in the polls or betting markets.
At any rate, anything can happen. Perhaps Trump once again having the wind at his back will make the NY judge more likely to sentence him to be tossed in the clink in early September. Other than that, it seems the lawfare options are running out. Though, I tend to think that the most sure way to ensure Trump’s victory would be to toss him in jail.
Once the forced enthusiasm for Harris runs out and it seems like Trump has a decent shot of winning, especially if Harris flubs the debate on Sept 10, the left will become desperate. But a cornered animal is most dangerous, and if the left thinks that the devil incarnate is about to once again violate their sacred halls of “democracy”, well then all bets are off.
Not to mention, there is still plenty of time for an “October Surprise”:
Interesting Links:
This piece did not come to my attention until today, but it is brilliant. I was extremely familiar with the argument that the state is replacing men, but I had not seen the term Brides of the State (BOTS) until now. In short, Democrats rely heavily on single women who are extremely unhappy and they have this demographic in a choke hold because they have used the state to replace a woman’s dependence on a man with a dependence on the state. Highly recommend:
https://unherd.com/2024/08/the-march-of-kamalas-brides/
It recalls a very good point Inez Stepman made awhile ago:
Another very important essay, that to some degree reflects the above stats, is an essay by Wally Nowinski that points out that thanks to changing voter demographics on a variety of fronts, high turnout now benefits Republicans:
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/dont-rock-the-vote
And finally, people have been noticing that the youth vote has been trending to the right. In 2016 Clinton won the youth vote by around 30 points. Biden by about 20. But then in the last year, polling had Trump catch up in a tie with Biden. Then, stunningly, when Biden dropped out, a Quinnipiac poll found Trump winning the youth vote over Harris by 19 points! This is shocking, though I am not sure what more recent polling suggests. https://poll.qu.edu/poll-release?releaseid=3901
The above demographic points give me some some hope that America might managed to escape from the leftist gnostic mind virus without turning into Maoist China in the next few decades. Lets us hope and pray that is the case.