George Orwell

I'm usually pretty dismissive of conspiracy theorists, not being one of the those "black helicopter" Republicans thinking every meeting of the Council of Foreign Relations is a dangerous cabal.

But, sometimes people simply start getting out of hand. You know, the ol "slippery slope" idea.

Which is why I was a little unnerved by this article in Time magazine

How Obama Is Using The Science of Change

Two weeks before Election Day, Barack Obama's campaign was mobilizing millions of supporters; it was a bit late to start rewriting get-out-the-vote (GOTV) scripts. "BUT, BUT, BUT," deputy field director Mike Moffo wrote to Obama's GOTV operatives nationwide, "What if I told you a world-famous team of genius scientists, psychologists and economists wrote down the best techniques for GOTV scripting?!?! Would you be interested in at least taking a look? Of course you would!!"

Moffo then passed along guidelines and a sample script from the Consortium of Behavioral Scientists, a secret advisory group of 29 of the nation's leading behaviorists. The key guideline was a simple message: "A Record Turnout Is Expected." ..

The existence of this behavioral dream team — which also included best-selling authors Dan Ariely of MIT (Predictably Irrational) and Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein of the University of Chicago (Nudge) as well as Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman of Princeton — has never been publicly disclosed,......

President Obama is still relying on behavioral science. But now his Administration is using it to try to transform the country.

Stop me for a second. Does the name "George Orwell" spring to mind?

Read the whole article. I want you to reflect then on the utter arrogance that pervades the concept that the American public are in need of what amount to behavior modification, not appeals to rational self-interest or national self-interest.  And that the answers to what is best for Americans are already known to the Obama administration.  Therefore, we must be conditioned to accept the pre-ordained answers.

Democracy. Who needs it. The voters might make mistakes. We'll deprogram them

  But Obama is no therapist changing individuals one at a time. He's an organizer trying to build community and inspire collective action through house parties and Facebook as well as rhetoric about shared values. In other words, he's trying to create social norms — behavioral change's killer app....

The research proves change can come about when it's easy and popular, but making it lucrative — or even mandatory — can make sure it happens.

Hmm, wasn't that why we got rid of King George III?

Now I acknowledge governments here and elesewhere have used pretty subtle and pervasive means to foster their agenda. But generally campaigns against drunk driving and for racial tolerance are means to promote already agreed upon social policies. Same with appeals to patriotism to bolster domestic support for a nation's foreign policy.

 What the Obama people here are seeking to do is a quantum leap forward and away from the concepts of individual liberty and representative government.  There's no political consensus on fixing entitlements or heath care or the energy system. And by seeking to impose social conformity on the "appropriate options", the Obama camp seeks to subvert the need to obtain the consent of the governed.   No wonder they've kept it all secret.

Time identifies this problem, and then adopts an "ends justify the means" defense.

  The idea of public officials, even well-meaning ones, trying to engineer our private behavior to produce change can seem a bit creepy.

But face it: Obama is right. Our emissions are boiling the planet, and most of our energy use is unnecessary. Our health expenditures are bankrupting the Treasury, and most of our visits to the doctor can be traced to unhealthy behavior. We do need to change, and we know it.

  So much for debating what we ought to do.  Just follow what "The One" has decided is best.

I'm slightly familiar with the science of behavior modification, having a son who is on the autistic spectrum.  It's ironic that concepts like Applied Behavior Analysis are used to help children with an expressive disorder properly communicate their wants and needs.

The Obama Behavior Modification agenda is designed to prevent typical adults from communicating their needs and wants; since more and more choices will be taken away from us and replaced with a government approved "default option", and tremendous peer pressure brought to bear against those with undesirable nonconformist choices.

Now, if this didn't leave you a little queasy, I refer one to Hot Air, and Ed Morrissey's fear that the Internet will now be legally subject to appropriation by the administration. 

The bill addresses the need to protect vital networks from cyber attack, but it gives a lot of power to the executive branch — perhaps too much power.

 I don;t know if the  Cybersecurity Act of 2009, S.773 would provide unfettered power to the Obama Administration to shut down the Internet. Morrissey suggests the bigger problem is   "that the bill essentially repeals the Fourth Amendment." 

If the Obama Administration wanted to quell some ad hoc "tea party" national civil protest movement, certaintly screwing with the World Wide Web would be one way to do it. That is how it is done in China, isn't it.

Again, I'm not big on conspiracy theories. But putting these two things in juxtaposition also doesn't leave me with warm feelings about the good intentions of the current administration. This keeps up, this RINO may go libertarian yet.

===Update===

While I was thinking about this, I realized that there had been a behavioral scientist who had written extensively on topics related to human choice.

Burrhus Frederic Skinner (March 20, 1904 – August 18, 1990) was an American psychologist, author, inventor, advocate for social reform,[1][2]and poet.[3] He was the Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology at Harvard University from 1958 until his retirement in 1974.[4] He invented the operant conditioning chamber, innovated his own philosophy of science called Radical Behaviorism,[5] and founded his own school of experimental research psychology—the experimental analysis of behavior. His analysis of human behavior culminated in his work Verbal Behavior, which has recently seen enormous increase in interest experimentally and in applied settings.[6] He discovered and advanced the rate of response as a dependent variable in psychological research. He invented the cumulative recorder to measure rate of responding as part of his highly influential work on schedules of reinforcement.[7] [8] In a recent survey, Skinner was listed as the most influential psychologist of the 20th century.[9] He was a prolific author who published 21 books and 180 articles.[10] [11]

OK, so why does this matter that Skinner is the major influence on contemporary behavior sciences. Well, what did he have to say about permitting individuals make decisions?

This was his little dissertation of applying behaviorism to society.

Beyond Freedom and Dignity is a book written by American psychologist B. F. Skinner and first published in 1971. The book argues that entrenched belief in free will and the moral autonomy of the individual (which Skinner referred to as "dignity") hinders the prospect of using scientific methods to modify behavior for the purpose of building a happier and better organized society.

Beyond Freedom and Dignity may be summarized as an attempt to promote Skinner's philosophy of science, the technology of human behavior, his conception of determinism, and what Skinner calls 'cultural engineering'.

"Almost all major problems involve human behavior, and they cannot be solved by physical and biological technology alone. What is needed is a technology of human behavior. 

Skiiner wrote another book Walden Two, "an earlier novel in which Skinner depicted a utopian community based on his ideas regarding behavior modification. In Beyond Freedom and Dignity Skinner extends his argument for explicit cultural engineering of which Walden Two may be seen as an example."

Accordingly to Wikipedia, Noah Chomsky took a big swipe at Skinner's efforts to apply behavioral psychology to societal reform.  I'm not sure I'm accustomed to having him as an ally, but when a hard lefty like him and a RINO like me are going libertarian, well, hmmmm

All along we've been told Paul Krugman walks across the East River when it comes to economics. Why...because he won a Nobel Prize.

So of course, he is always right and those clueless craven hack Republican politicians in Washington are always wrong.

Sadly, Krugman's opinion of governmental action is solely dependent on the party label of the politician enacting it .

Paul Krugman, October 8, 2007

People claim to be shocked by Mr. Bush’s general fiscal irresponsibility. But conservative intellectuals, by their own account, abandoned fiscal responsibility 30 years ago

Paul Krugman, February 27, 2009

Bear in mind that from 2005 to 2007, that is, in the three years before the crisis, the federal deficit averaged only $243 billion a year. Now, during those years, revenues were inflated, to some degree, by the housing bubble. But it's also true that we were spending more than $100 billion a year in Iraq.

Why is it I doubt an apology to Bush for running a budget nearly in balance sans Iraq  is going to be offerred. Now what was "general fiscal irrresponsiblity" under a Republican president will be a fraction of the structural deficit Obama will maintain long after the present economic crisis abates.  If Obama and Pelosi could propose anything which could generate a 2012 or 2013 deficit within $100 billion of the Bush number I'd be shocked

Why is it "deficit spending" is an Orwellian term for the Democrats; they are always against it, except when they get to do it themselves.

And Ok, my economic education is mostly from the school of hard knocks, but Paul, noone really  buys  two central assumptions in Obama's rose colored deluge of red ink; a) cap and trade taxes will yield a windfall   b) long term federal interest rates will lock in at historic lows.

Maybe Paul if you stop sipping the Kool Aid you'll realize that once fed rates return to economically normal levels the US overseas debt load will result in "Buzz Lightyear economics" --- deficits to "infinity and beyond!". And you won;t have George W. Bush, that incurious Texas cowboy to blame. You'll have economic policies generated by the "best and the brightest"  American liberal Ivy League colleges have to offer.  (It's intentionally ironic I used that phrase; the last time the Ivy League intelligensia were so sure of themselves was during the run up to Vietnam)

I'm not going to dismiss that Krugman is a brighter guy than most, he did see the housing bubble en route . But the bigger point is that when Krugman identified the problem, his political allies made matters even worse.    .  Unlike the old E.F. Hutton ad, when Krugman talks, policy leaders tune out.

The bottom line is that Paul Krugman must know intuitively that the Obama program is going to yield suboptimal economic results, but is cheerleading for it anyway.  And if that doesn;t make Krugman a political hack, well. what would?

I'm not going to assume all 2008 Obama supporters are scamming me about the economy.  Warren Buffett was honest enough to tell his shareholders 

  “the economy will be in shambles throughout 2009 — and for that matter, probably well beyond.”

But Krugman is doing exactly what John Hinderaker predicted in 2005.

Well, if we believed anything Krugman writes, we'd be worried all the time. Or at least until we have a Democratic administration, when everything will be rosy again

The most eloquent words don;t overcome an ideological driven economic agenda based on improbable assumptions and rosy forecasts.  There's no Nobel Prize for propaganda, Paul. If you still want to be treated as a serious academic analyst, stop having your columms read like David Avelrod wrote them. 

====UPDATE====

I found this Krugman article from 2000; written prior to his becoming a full time advocate against George W. Bush and for the Democratic party.  I will let you reach your own conclusions if the 2009 Paul Krugman fits the definition of "hack" established by the 2000 Paul Krugman  

How can you tell the hacks from the serious analysts? One answer is to do a little homework. Hack jobs often involve surprisingly raw, transparent misrepresentations of fact: in these days of search engines and online databases you don't need a staff of research assistants to catch 'em with their hands in the cookie jar. But there is another telltale clue: if a person, or especially an organization, always sings the same tune, watch out.

and why did Krugman think some economist went the hack route?

 Love of the limelight, love of the feeling of being part of a Movement, even love of the idea of oneself as a bold rebel against the Evil Empire can be equally corrupting of one's intellectual integrity.

Krugman's conclusion

Of course, honest men can disagree, and they can also make mistakes. But it's still a good idea to tune out supposed experts whose minds are made up in advance. Or at least that's what they told me to say.