We're All Europeans Now

Dick Morris, in a breezy little missive this morning, lays out in detail what David and I have been pointing to and warning about re: the advent of Lord Obama and the insertion of socialism into America in a serious way.

2009-2010 will rank with 1913-14, 1933-36, 1964-65 and 1981-82 as years that will permanently change our government, politics and lives. Just as the stars were aligned for Wilson, Roosevelt, Johnson and Reagan, they are aligned for Obama. Simply put, we enter his administration as free-enterprise, market-dominated, laissez-faire America. We will shortly become like Germany, France, the United Kingdom, or Sweden -- a socialist democracy in which the government dominates the economy, determines private-sector priorities and offers a vastly expanded range of services to many more people at much higher taxes.
Obama will accomplish his agenda of "reform" under the rubric of "recovery." Using the electoral mandate bestowed on a Democratic Congress by restless voters and the economic power given his administration by terrified Americans, he will change our country fundamentally in the name of lifting the depression. His stimulus packages won't do much to shorten the downturn -- although they will make it less painful -- but they will do a great deal to change our nation. But none of these changes will cure the depression. It will end when the private sector works through the high debt levels that triggered the collapse in the first place. And, then, the large stimulus package deficits will likely lead to rapid inflation, probably necessitating a second recession to cure it...

So Obama's name will be mud by 2012 and probably by 2010 as well. And the Republican Party will make big gains and regain much of its lost power.
But it will be too late to reverse the socialism of much of the economy, the demographic change in the electorate, the rationing of healthcare by the government, the surge of unionization and the crippling of talk radio.

So there you have it--the high and low of it, the dark and the light. Leo Strauss long ago noted as a general truth that a people deserves the government they have, and this is especially true in places where people have de jure and de facto legal and political control over who governs them. We can blame only ourselves for the loss of freedom we are dishing up for ourselves. This is perhaps the leading problem of democracy--a too-large percentage of the people do not in fact know what is good for them, and will in fact listen to skilled demagogues and follow them all the way into tyranny.

The slow motion tumble down from our high achievement is speeding now; we have turned a corner in our history that will forever mark a point of regret. We're all Europeans now.