Bruce Bartlett Doesn't Like Me

I've annoyed a semi-famous person. I'm stoked.

Bruce Bartlett is a veteran Republican guru -- and, often, a staffer for successful Republican politicians. He was a domestic policy adviser to Ronald Reagan, and a senior policy analyst in the White House under George H.W. Bush.

Since leaving the White House, he's been known largely as a pundit and scold in intra-Republican matters. He is the author for example of IMPOSTER (2006), a broadside at what he saw as the ruinous policies of Bush the younger.

Bartlett since has built something of a reputation as a pundit engaged chiefly in those intra-Republican battles. He is unhappy in particular with certain libertarian institutions and websites. This is where I enter the picture.

Soon after 9 AM Tuesday morning (all my times here will be eastern time), Bartlett tweeted "Ron Paul's favorite website attacks the transcontinental railroad. Way to stay relevant, guys." This was a reference to something on Lew Rockwell's site, though it had apparently originated at Mises.org. .

Ryan McMaken has an article there entitled "Crony Capitalism and the Transcontinental Railroads." He makes the perfectly sound point that during the 1860s, as the first transcontinentals got off the drawing board and started occupying ground, there wasn't much by way of economic justification for them. They were symbols of various intentions, but they weren't viable ways of serving a real and substantial market demand for travel -- or the conveyance of freight -- along those routes.

There is nothing even remotely antiquarian about making this point. President Obama, and others, have cited the transcontinentals as one of the great successes of federal government action, as a precedent of sorts for other large-scale federal action. So its fair to say "whoa --is that a golden calf you are worshipping?" It is because they were so blatantly dependent upon government largesse that these railroads (again using McMaken's words) became "scandal-ridden, wasteful, and contemptuous of the public."

So, I rose to Bartlett's bait. Around 10:08 I tweeted as follows, "The 19th century railroads were the original 2Big2Fail corp-welfare monsters. Is it so awful to say so, Bruce?"

I pause now to refer you, dear blogreader, to an uneven but fascinating book by Dennis Drabelle, THE GREAT AMERICAN RAILROAD WAR. I reviewed this book for The Federal Lawyer. As I wrote in that review, the parts of the book that work the best deal with William Randolph Hearst, Ambrose Bierce, and their struggle against a big railroad bailout that the Central Pacific and its legislative friends were trying to push through Congress in 1896. So this isn't my first railroad-history rodeo.

Indeed, I was "to the manner born," as one of the grandsons of Henry Comstock.

Bartlett deigned to answer that question in the sort of tone Mary Wollstonecraft once called "gothic affability." "@ccfaille If you like living in the past, think no current issues are worth bothering with."

He later went further (I suspect), writing "Some right wing nut job didn't get the memo that I am to be completely ignored, never mentioned by lovers of liberty." I don't know for sure that is a reference to me. Whether it is or not, it is wonderful. It starts with sticking an absurd label on me (or whomever) and proceeds to twist itself into a complaint that Bartlett isn't getting enough attention.

Anyway, here are my responses. I couldn't resist sending three, and straining somewhat against the hyper-concise twitter idiom.

First, "Check Drabelle's book, esp. re the 1890s politics of railroad refinancing. Bierce and Norris and Hearst oh my."

Second, "short version thedailybeast2012"

Finally, "Current issues didn't pop into existence five minutes ago. They have a history. Does your car have a rearview mirror?"

That will be it, unless he resumes. Anyway, it has been a thrill. I do believe I've exposed the superficiality of the pompous buffoons by whom we are governed. That is the greatest current issue of all.

A Story About Coleridge

This is a quote from a memoir by Dorothy Wordsworth, reflecting on a trip she took with two famous poets, her brother, William Wordsworth, and their similarly gifted companion, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. We sat upon a bench, placed for the sake of one of these views, whence we looked down upon the waterfall, and over the open country ... A lady and gentleman, more expeditious tourists than ourselves, came to the spot; they left us at the seat, and we found them again at another station above the Falls. Coleridge, who is always good-natured enough to enter into conversation with anybody whom he meets in his way, began to talk with the gentleman, who observed that it was a majestic waterfall. Coleridge was delighted with the accuracy of the epithet, particularly as he had been settling in his own mind the precise meaning of the words grand, majestic, sublime, etc., and had discussed the subject with William at some length the day before. “Yes, sir,” says Coleridge, “it is a maj...

Searle: The Chinese Room

John Searle has become the object of accusations of improper conduct. These accusations even have some people in the world of academic philosophy saying that instructors in that world should try to avoid teaching Searle's views. That is an odd contention, and has given rise to heated exchanges in certain corners of the blogosphere. At Leiter Reports, I encountered a comment from someone describing himself as "grad student drop out." GSDO said: " This is a side question (and not at all an attempt to answer the question BL posed): How important is John Searle's work? Are people still working on speech act theory or is that just another dead end in the history of 20th century philosophy? My impression is that his reputation is somewhat inflated from all of his speaking engagements and NYRoB reviews. The Chinese room argument is a classic, but is there much more to his work than that?" I took it upon myself to answer that on LR. But here I'll tak...

Recent Controversies Involving Nassim Taleb, Part I

I've written about Nassim Taleb on earlier occasions in this blog. I'll let you do the search yourself, dear reader, for the full background. The short answer to the question "who is Taleb?" is this: he is a 57 year old man born in Lebanon, educated in France, who has been both a hedge fund manager and a derivatives trader. He retired from active participation from the financial world sometime between 2004 and 2006, and has been a full-time writer and provocateur ever since. Taleb's writings for the general public began where one might expect -- in the field where he had made his money -- and he explained certain financial issues to a broad audiences in a very dramatic non-technical way. Since then, he has widened has fields of study, writing about just about everything, applying the intellectual tools he honed in that earlier work. As you might have gather from the above, I respect Taleb, though I have sometimes been critical of him when my own writing ab...

Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

Search This Blog