Translating Frum Ferengi

David Frum is a ferengi. Don't tell me there's not a similarity. Certainly they think alike. Never heard of a ferengi? They're a race of robber barons from Star Trek who live by the Rules of Acquisition - a long list of proverbs which guide every aspect of their lives. Although an anachronism in an advancing liberal society such as ours, one nevertheless has to occasionally deal with these diminutive, greedy creatures.

I don't read Frum anymore, except when researching sources of wingnut narrative; but I stumbled upon his diary at the National Review Online last night, and Rule of Acquisition #152 immediately came to mind: A lie is a way to tell the truth to someone who doesn't know.

I actually don't know how much Frum lies, if ever. Okay, he must, but he's certainly not as shrill or sensationalist as Ann Coulter (thank goodness for small, puny mercies), but is he more accurate?

Rule 267: If you believe it, they believe it (Feb 27 Diary Entry)

Frum is pleased that, as a pundit, a prediction he made while debating Andrew Sullivan over same sex marriage (SSM) years back came true: The Ontario government has just passed a law changing how government forms are to describe spouses. According to Frum, (emphasis mine)

'...one effect of this revolution - and for many proponents, one of the revolution's aims - is to make forever unthinkable the idea that husbands and wives each have special duties to one another, and that a husband's duties to his wife... are not the same as a wife's duties to her husband.'

Where do I start? Frum, a low-tax, small government conservative, believes that government defines for me the nature of my relationship with my wife?! Government defines nature? There's a conspiracy (see my emphasis above) by many supporters of SSM to apparently brainwash us by altering a legal definition to ensure only the equal application of law?

Relationships were around a long time before government. We seemed to have formed relationships and procreated anyway.

And there isn't anything currently in marital law which affects how a husband and wife decide to define and meet mutual obligations. I honestly don't know where Frum is getting any of this. He has his own perception of marriage, but seems to fail to understand that this is separate from the law, which, given his ivy school law credentials, doesn't wash.

And there we also have yet more evidence of Frum-as-ferengi: A woman wearing clothes is like a man in the kitchen (Rule 4).

'Once we lose that knowledge, we lose the basic grammar of marriage. It is one more reminder that in the same-sex marriage debate, we are debating not marriage's change - but marriage's overthrow.'

Since the state doesn't define the nature of people's relationships, this is just bunk. The knowledge of marriage Frum is talking about doesn't come from the State, it comes from self-determination, biology and/or religion and/or perception of tradition.

Rule 239: Never be afraid to mislabel a product (Diary Entry Feb 25)

According to this diary entry, not being part of BMD means that it is hypocritical to insist upon being advised if the US intends to violate our airspace.

Obviously not.

This entry further argues that wanting to be advised in such a circumstance is the same as suddenly wanting in on BMD during such an emergency. This is clearly a logical fallacy.

Am I to believe that Frum, a graduate of Harvard Law School, doesn't know this?

Rule 181: Not even dishonesty can tarnish the shine of profit (Feb 22 Diary Entry)

Never mind the Chalabi stuff in this entry, though Frum's expectation that the discredited and hated Chalabi would ever had made it to the office of Iraqi prime minister is laughable (It's worth noting at this juncture that Chalabi was Richard Perle's man, and Frum and Perle are pals.) It's Frum's spinning on the US social security issue here that catches my eye.

If you aren't familiar with the issue, put your fiscal brain cells in gear. If I can understand this, you can.

America's aging population will come to stress the social security system starting in 2018. In the 1980s this was foreseen, so the Social Security Trust Fund was set up to invest social security reserves. These reserves were invested in federal government bonds, gathering interest. Come 2018 or so, the funds starts cashing in these bonds to make up the difference between the tax revenue into the social security system and the money paid out to recipients. Somewhere around 2042 or 2052 (depending on which actuarial report you read), the trust fund won't be able to cover the entire shortfall. There is, of course, much debate about that point: the date has been steadily pushed into the future due to good economic projections, and some claim that the crisis may not even exist.

There is a second crisis here. As the trust fund is invested in government bonds, when the fund starts to cash them, the government has to come up with the money. And the government likely won't have it without having to slash spending or raise revenue, especially as the years wear on past 2018. So the Republican plan is to find some way out this obligation, through whatever scheme they can cook up.

Democrats argue that this isn't a problem with the social security system. It's entitled to cash the bonds, just like any investor. China holds a lot of American treasury bonds, so would it be tolerated to deny China its money? Is it any less correct to deny the American people the same? If the trust fund had instead invested in the stock market, would it be okay for the subject corporations to dodge their fiscal responsibilities to shareholders?

Frum says that these are legal arguments, but not economic ones. Since the government essentially owes this money to itself, it can solve this problem any way it wants:

'Yes, if you or I owned a big bunch of US government bonds, we'd feel pretty comfortable. We could cash them and retire to enjoy our claim on the future labor of others. But it does not do the US government much good to own a big bunch of its own bonds.

The Trust Fund is and always has been a dodge, in this sense: the economic problem of Social Security would be precisely the same if the Trust Fund had never been invented in the first place. It will not make the job of finding the money to pay the promised benefits even an iota easier after 2018 that the US government engages in a preliminary round of bond-cashing. It will still have to raise other taxes or cut other spending, just as if the Fund did not exist.'

This is all true enough, within a narrow context. Frum's being very sneaky here. Arguing that the problem would be the same with or without the fund is irrelevant. The question Frum is avoiding is Why is it so hard for the government to pay for the bonds in the fund in the first place?

Had the fund been completely invested in non-government bonds, the government would still have had to issue the same number of bonds to meet its needs. They just would have been held by some other entity, such as China. Thus, the government would still have the same problem. Indeed, if social security didn't exist at all, the problem would still be here!

Rule #152: A lie is a way to tell the truth to someone who doesn't know

And here's where we return to rule #152. Frum is pushing a narrative here being repeated ad nauseam by the GOP: Social security is in trouble, so that's where the fix belongs.

But what's the truth here? Why is the government lacking the money to pay for the bonds? Well, the war in Iraq hasn't helped, but it's a drop in the bucket compared to Bush's tax cuts.

Without the cuts, the social security system would easily be solvent, with money to spare.

And that's something Frum-ferengi doesn't want noticed.

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More on David Frum:

From Answer.com
His website
He's a Resident Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute
The 'Axis of Evil' disclosure story

Finally, Frum's father-in-law is none other than Peter Worthington, another ferengi of note.

--- March 1
Update:

Myopic Zeal was kind enough to link to this post, and raises an issue with my writing style (actually a writing choice, now that I think about it). I responded there.

It is a bad idea to debunk with an acerbic tone?

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Over at Small Dead Animals the Frum diary on SSM (Feb 27) was posted, sans any editorial. I've been reading the comments people have posted there, trying to figure out if anyone has made an objective defense of what Frum wrote. I'm coming up empty...

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And Sinister Thoughts named Frum Hysterical Right Wing American Of The Day for his SSM stance.