Inside the Union Mind

It has been interesting to see all these union people jumping up and down and chanting their chants up in Wisconsin.

"What do we want?" ("Fill in the blank!") When do we want it?" ("Now!")

"We are..." ("We are...") "Union!" ("Union!")

It's like watching someone else's religion.

Some of the scenes are like time travel back to the sixties. Guitars. Joan Baez freedom songs. It's really pathetic.

In my column on the subject, "The Unions Have No Clothes," I identify the difference between public sector and private sector unions. With the former, the relationship between management and labor is symbiotic, not adversarial. (1) Unions contribute money for the re-election of their employers (if they're Democrats). (2) The employers don't use their own money to pay their employees. They tax it from other people or they borrow it. I thank George Will for pointing out the difference in his much finer column, "Out of Wisconsin."

The heart of my argument is this.

Margaret Thatcher faced a similar issue when she became British Prime Minister in 1979. ... Thatcher knew she would have to face down the unions over where sovereignty and the locus of democracy lay in Great Britain, in the elected government or in the labor unions. The clash in Wisconsin shows the same question is at issue in America today.

These union people speak about the "fight for democracy," and they compare their fight in Wisconsin to the fight for democracy in the Middle East and North Africa. It seems that "democracy" means widespread unionization and consequent union domination of politics. That's what Britain had between WWII and Mrs. Thatcher. It is also the same reasoning that supported the claim of East European communist dictatorships calling themselves "democracies" (like the German Democratic Republic, or communist East Germany). These are the same unions that want to do away with the secret ballot by "card check" legislation that would allow union thugs to approach people--maybe at their homes--with cards for them to sign...no pressure, of course.

The left doesn't see how these obscenely generous public service employee compensation packages are bankrupting government. To them it is not a spending problem, but a revenue problem. Ben Manski of the Liberty Tree Foundation says what seems self-evident to the "soak-the-rich" end of the political spectrum. According to him, everybody--public and private sector--should be able to quit work at 50 and be paid full salary for the rest of their lives. Paying for it should be no problem: raise taxes on the rich and the corporations. It's as simple as that. Lots of money there. Free for the taking.



In light of this, consider how closely tied the White House is to union power. Richard Trumka, the president of the AFL-CIO, is a weekly advisor to the White House.



This union dominated world of Barack Obama's community organizing dreams is an economic and political nightmare. It's good that we are having it out.
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One helpful commenter at the Worldmag column shares four points of difference between public and private sector unions that david Brooks lists in his column:

1. “Private sector unions push against the interests of shareholders and management; public sector unions push against the interests of taxpayers.” (David Brooks, Op-ed, New York Times, Feb. 21, 2011).

2. “Private sector union members know that their employers could go out of business, so they have an incentive to mitigate their demands; public sector union members work for state monopolies and have no such interest.” (David Brooks, Op-ed, New York Times, Feb. 21, 2011).

3. “Private sector unions confront managers who have an incentive to push back against their demands. Public sector unions face managers who have an incentive to give into them for the sake of their own survival.” (David Brooks, Op-ed, New York Times, Feb. 21, 2011).

4. “Most important, public sector unions help choose those they negotiate with. Through gigantic campaign contributions and overall clout, they have enormous influence over who gets elected to bargain with them, especially in state and local races.” (David Brooks, Op-ed, New York Times, Feb. 21, 2011).

But how many people in the public discussion just talk about "unions" as though these government worker unions weren't a separate species?

Big Government and the iGeneration

Michael Barone noticed what is perhaps impolite to mention, viz. that the current Democratic leadership is really, really old (”Wily Old Dems take on Whippersnapper Republicans“).

The ages of the ranking Democrats on the Appropriations, Ways and Means, Education, Energy and Commerce, Financial Services, Foreign Affairs, and Judiciary committees are 70, 79, 65, 71, 70, 69, and 81. The three party leaders are 70, 71, and 70.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with that on its own. But he adds that their generation thinks of the country's business based on an outdated model that he calls “Big Unit America.” It is a country controlled by big government, big business, and big labor. We saw it in the 111th Congress. Huge stimulus package to move the economy. Prop up the unions with card check. One big health care insurance system to cover everyone (eventually).

It struck me, however, that this view is entirely out of step with this Internet formed, emerging generation who, in my Worldmag column, I call the iGeneration ("The Politics of the iGeneration").

While it is true that younger voters are still breaking for the Democrats, as they grow up and put life and politics together they will find that the Big Unit view of the world is not theirs. The younger generation values personal control of their lives, and this priority is driven by technology. They have personal settings and privacy settings for everything. They are used to having My-this and My-that. Niche news and information sources on the Internet have replaced the big three networks of the 1970s. They are used to being heard (or at least thinking they’re being heard) through everything from blogs and comment threads to the widely publicized chatter of social network sites. Centralized, bossy, deaf bureaucracies will not be their thing. It’s not how they roll.

These are people who design their own Converse high-tops online before they buy them.

What will this young generation expect in place of centrally planned, centrally administered government health care, for example? It will be precisely what John McCain advocated (but tepidly, and explained poorly) during the 2008 election: consumer-driven health care.

See my 2008 post on it: "Hope for the Health Care Mess." That comes with links to Regina Herzlinger's three books on the subject.

The Congresswoman From La Raza

Representative Loretta Sanchez, apparently unaware that people outside her California (Mexifornia?) district speak Spanish, means to defend as a matter of racial right the seat she stole fair and square from "Bomber" Bob Dornan back when all Republicans could do was stand in stunned amazement when they witnessed undisguised vote fraud. Oh wait...

But anyway, this bit of video of Sanchez indignantly warning that the "Vietnamese" and Republicans are trying to steal "their" seat touches on both of her areas of expertise--vote fraud and racial politics. But sadly, those are the first tools out of the bag for most Democrat operatives and candidates in the multi-culti era we are thrown into.

Time for a better sort of immigrant, I say. No hope for a better sort of Democrat though.

Governing Without Trust

Government is about trust. This is especially true in a representative democracy, the form of government in which some people govern others only because the people have entrusted authority to them. In our democracy today, public trust is at an historic low. That means an astonishingly high percentage of the population sees an unacceptably wide gap between what the government is doing and what they would like the government to be doing in matters that are decisively important to them.

Given the trust gap, and given especially how widely and clearly the gap has been publicized, people are alarmed that the governing Democrats are proceeding with the transformative change that has brought them into such wide disfavor.

At Worldmag.com ("The Trust Gap") I go on to show how the Democrats have proceeded not only with disregard to public outcry and plunging public trust, but with redoubled speed with the change they had in mind in 2008 as opposed to the change the public expected. I argue that while Obama, Pelosi, and Reid have the legal right to do what they're doing, even to the point of effecting a Lame Duck Revolution, with such low public support it has the character of tyranny.

Harold adds:
"Trust" is the sine qua non (without which not) for consent. The consent of the governed, the central legitimizing feature of a representative government, can only be present if both the institutional structure is trusted and the representatives are trusted. The tyrannous progressive coalition (shamefully including some Republicans) now in charge has severely damaged our institutions by running rough shod over the constitutional boundaries, but also by lying straight at us in a way that would make even George Orwell blush. They do not have the nation's consent to transform us into a euro style social democracy (and they know it)--hence the long-wave reaction that is the Tea Party. Consent is given, and it is taken away. I hope it is not too late to matter. The world's tyrants have not been overly concerned with consent, nor have they needed to be.

Innes adds:
John Fund documents the shameless comfort with which Democrats have been seriously and publicly entertaining the idea of a Lame Duck Revolution after the November electoral slaughter. "The Obama-Pelosi Lame Duck Strategy," Wall Street Journal, July 9, 2010.) Those would be conditions under which I would head for Washington to join throngs of patriots in storming the Capitol Building. I can see Nancy Pelosi's uncomprehending and morally indignant expression even now.

Killing Prosperity and Security As Policy

The Democrats are working at full throttle to get this country under the firm and detailed direction of left wing bureaucrats before their two year window of opportunity closes in January of 2011 when the new Congress is sworn in. Friday's Wall Street Journal opinion page lays out what that means to us, our children, and our grandchildren. Peter Wallison explains how they are choking the source of our prosperity. Mortimer Zuckerman shows how they squandering our existing prosperity. Douglas Feith and Abram Shulsky explain how they are casting away the nuclear umbrella that has been securing our prosperity and all our liberties.

Wallison points out in "Republicans and America's New Deal" that even though Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal actually lengthened and deepened the Depression, President Obama and the old liberals in Congress has pressed forward with similar policies.

The signature initiatives of the Obama administration were very much in the mold of the old New Deal—the heedless spending, a stimulus plan focused on government employment, a health-care program that brought one-sixth of the economy under government control, and now the financial regulatory bill that would control another sixth. ...

Because of ObamaCare, the failed stimulus package, and the massive deficits that will afflict the country for years to come, the Democrats are likely to pay dearly in November. But not before those who are still in the thrall of the New Deal will have taken the U.S. financial system back almost 75 years. ...


The only good thing to come from this spectacle is that it shows the business community and American voters that the Democratic Party—despite the moderate face of the Obama presidential campaign—has not outgrown their New Deal mentality. Democrats are still the party of government and the special interests that cling to it.

In "The Bankrupting of America," Mortimer Zuckerman turns the spotlight on how the huge public service unions and the party of government serve one another at the expense not only of taxpayer, but of the country's long-term economic viability. Think of GM and California, but with no possibility of a bailout.

Public unions organize voting campaigns for politicians who, on election, repay their benefactors by approving salaries and benefits for the public sector, irrespective of whether they are sustainable. ...

What we suffer is a ruinously expensive collaboration between elected officials and unionized state and local workers, purchased with taxpayer money. ... No wonder the Service Employees International Union has become the nation's fastest-growing union: It represents government and health-care workers. Half of its 700,000 California members are government employees. More and more, it wins not on the picket line but at the negotiating table, where it backs up traditional strong-arming with political power. It spends vast amounts of money on initiatives that keep the government growing and the gravy flowing. ...

City government was developed to serve its citizens. Today the citizenry is working in large part to serve the government. It is always hard to shrink government spending. It is particularly difficult when public-sector unions have such a unique lever of pressure. We have to escape this cycle or it will crush us.

Finally,  Barack Obama is trying to bring us a nuclear free world, and isn't that special. His government's statement on how to reach this blessed goal is expressed in a document called the Nuclear Posture Review (NPR). The Defense Department states that, "The Nuclear Posture Review is a legislatively-mandated review that establishes U.S. nuclear policy, strategy, capabilities and force posture for the next five to ten years." In "The Dangerous Illusion of 'Nuclear Zero'," Douglas Feith and Abram Shulsky, both of the Hudson Institute, argue that the one awkward little catch to fulfilling this dream is that, as the document itself tells us, it requires world peace as a precondition. But on we go, just the same.

One of the conditions that would permit the United States and others to give up their nuclear weapons "without risking greater international instability and insecurity" is "the resolution of regional disputes that can motivate rival states to acquire and maintain nuclear weapons." Another condition is not only "verification methods and technologies capable of detecting violations of disarmament obligations," but also "enforcement measures strong and credible enough to deter such violations."

The first condition would require ending the Arab-Israeli conflict, settling the Korean War, resolving Kashmir and the other India-Pakistan disputes, and defusing Iran's tensions with its neighbors and with the U.S. It also means solving any other significant conflicts that might arise.

Verification would be tough, but even if technology could solve the problem, the question remains: What kind of "enforcement measures" do those who drafted the NPR imagine? ... "Strong enough" enforcement would have to include military measures. Is the idea here a U.N. military force that could fight large wars, as some diplomats proposed when the U.N. Charter was negotiated in the late 1940s? Or would military enforcement be the duty of the strongest state, presumably the U.S.? Only an arrangement verging on world government—an entity that could deploy overwhelming military power against a violator without interference by other powers—could possibly fill the bill. ...

In the event of a serious crisis, countries would race to reconstitute their nuclear arsenals. The winner would enjoy a fleeting nuclear monopoly, and then come under severe pressure to use its nuclear weapons decisively. The resulting instability could make the competitive mobilizations of the European armies in 1914 look like a walk in the park.

No matter how hard the polls turn against them, these New Left Democrats who emerged from the radicalism of the 1960s (with whom Barack Obama is noticeably comfortable) will drive home their political and economic agenda because they are sure that they know better than everyone else, and also because they are moved by a moral passion that is as deaf any appeal to the historical record, the economically obvious, and even their own political self-interest as the most fanatical jihadist.

Political Evil This Way Comes

The so-called Tea Party continues to make the news, recently as object of the mainstream media's vilification as just so many white, upper-income racists. Others focus on the vast government spending and corresponding public debt that provoked these ordinary people into active political involvement. I argue today on WORLDmag.com ("Tyrants Among Us") that while runaway government spending is a big part of what is driving Tea Partiers to revolt, underlying that is a more fundamental fear in the face of runaway government size and power and lawless intrusion. They see tyranny hatching out of Washington like a scaly thing, bigger and more sure footed than ever seen before, and they are fighting for the survival of liberty.

Here is the little more rambling, less politically restrained version of the published article:

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What angers Americans in the Tea Party movement is tyranny. And well it should. It is spreading in Washington even more than usual.

Our Declaration of Independence still speaks for us where it says:

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.

Lawless government is an unmistakable sign of tyranny, i.e., government that exercises power not under law or according to the authority given to it by consent of the governed, but on an authority it claims to have in itself.
The Democratic Party's health care reform legislation is an example of governing tyrannically. The law requires people to purchase health insurance who, perhaps because they are young and healthy, presently do not carry it. This is not a tax. It is the government just telling you to do something because they believe it to be good for the country. It is not conditional upon any other behavior. It says, "You will do this or we will punish you with a fine."

I have not heard a credible argument from any elected officeholder justifying this provision constitutionally. Even the president, who has taught constitutional law, made only a vague reference to the state requirement that people buy car insurance, which of course is different in that it is a condition of owning a car for use on public roads. If people take the bus or walk, they can decline the purchase. But this is government exercising authority beyond what the Constitution allows, authority the people did not entrust to it. This is power exercised tyrannically, and on a grand scale.

At a constituent meeting, Rep. Phil Hare, a Democratic congressman from Illinois, stated with unguarded candor (as though it were no big deal) his disregard for the constitutional limits of congressional power when it comes to providing for what he thinks is the public good.



When asked to locate in the Constitution where Congress gets the authority to require everyone to buy health insurance, his response was, "I don't worry about the Constitution on this...I care more about the people dying every day who don't have health care." In a half-hearted attempt to find a constitutional hook on which to hang the law after the fact, he cited the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, thinking that he was quoting the Constitution. When someone pointed out that these words are found in the Declaration of Independence, he expressed indifference to the distinction. "Doesn't matter to me. Either one."

In other words, when it comes to doing good, constitutional restraints are irrelevant. They don't apply. The legal constraints of the Constitution are, in the eyes of Democrats like Phil Hare and, apparently, the president, only for bad people. The goodness of the obviously good things that good hearted people do with government power is the ultimate foundation of public authority, transcending even the Constitution. Another way of stating this view is that moral progress is the fundamental law of the land. It is the unwritten constitution behind the written constitution. That is to say, the politically progressive use of power is self-authorizing. Every other exercise of civil authority must be subject to constitutional limitations because that is what a constitution is for.

This lawlessly self-flattering attitude seems to draw, but unfaithfully, from Cicero's maxim in De Legibus (3.3.8) that has echoed loudly through the centuries, Salus populi suprema lex esto, "the welfare of the people is the highest law." By salus, or welfare, he meant the well-being or safety of the people. The sense of the statement is that because the individual depends on the community for the enjoyment of his private goods, and even for his very life, his individual good must yield to the public good in general when the two come into conflict. No law needs to state this. It is in the nature of the political relationship. In that sense it is the supreme law that transcends even the most fundamental written laws.

Francis Bacon reiterated the thought in #56 of the Essays, "Of Judicature." Uttered by Cicero, the words are taken in their natural law context. But Bacon's view of justice is more conventional and mundane. He explicitly cautions his readers against laws that claim divine origin, saying, "laws, except they be in order to that end, are but things captious [misleading], and oracles not well inspired." In other words, judges should pay no attention to divine law and philosophic consideration of natural law. These only distract from civil business. John Locke used it as the epigraph for his Two Treatises of Government. Both of these men used a surface piety and respect for traditional views to direct people to a radically popular foundation of political justice. But they both advocated the rule of law, even of a fundamental law in a liberal, constitutional republic. What we see in Congressman Hare's words, and in the aggressive expansion of government by his party without regard to the enumerated powers of the Constitution is something that is neither Ciceronian nor Lockean, but rather Jacobin. Yes, Jacobin.

Cicero's maxim is one for emergencies. The Democrats in Congress, along with the president, are governing as though it were the ordinary basis for legislative activity, or, to speak more cautiously, as though the fullest and immediate expansion of the welfare state were a matter of national emergency.

But in the face of such tyrannical usurpation of authority, such an obvious design to reduce us under the absolute despotism of benevolent technocracy does not justify violence. It does, however, justify vigilance. Every patriot should exercise that vigilance at the ballot box in November, asking him or herself the question, "Does this candidate govern or promise to govern under the laws, or regardless of the laws as a law himself?" Will this candidate govern as a benevolent despot, or as a public servant under law?

Let me hasten to add in conclusion that Christians are substantially to blame for this state of affairs. The constitution for the Kingdom of God is the Bible. In the late nineteenth century, Christians started debunking and dismissing its authority, and substituting enlightened progressive morality and the latest developments of scientific thinking in its place. Today, even Protestant Evangelicals, who supposedly have a high view of Scripture, treat the details of its teachings with careless disregard, following instead all too often the fashions of Evangelical subculture.

Christians can be salt and light by conforming their convictions more conscientiously to the Word of God, and voting their convictions more faithfully on election days.

Turning Anger Into Reform

It's not just that the Democrats won and the Republicans lost over the health insurance reform issue. What angers people is that the President and the Congressional leadership forced through a package that was highly unpopular with the electorate. In addition, it was only able to squeak through (unable to attract even a single Republican vote from anywhere in the country, notes Daniel Henninger in "Repeal the Democrats") only by bribing and threatening a significant number from their own party. So what has people angry is not only the vast expansion of government control over the details of people's lives, but, in two words, the condescension and the corruption.

There is much talk now about throwing the Democrats out of office in November, i.e., using the ballot box to remove specific people from power. So in the Wall Street Journal just today, Daniel Henninger writes "Repeal the Democrats," and Karl Rove gives us, "What the Republicans Should Do Now." Rove recommends offering reform, but he means alternative health care reform.

But in the wake of what these Euro-Social Democrats have done to a trusting public, deeper reform is needed. This is what I argue in my WORLDmag.com article today, "Turning Public Anger into Political Reform." It starts this way:

Political rage is a terrible thing to waste. And after forcing through a government takeover of the healthcare industry that most people passionately oppose, Congress seems to be a worthy target for public wrath. Of course, death threats and vandalism are not only counterproductive, they’re also uncivilized and evil. There is a more politic way, a more American way.

It was the securely rooted, career politicians—the old “liberal bulls” of Congress—who commanded this assault on the collective judgment of the American people. Consider how long the most prominent champions of Obamacare have been sitting in the House. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has been in office for almost 23 years. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), 29 years. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and George Miller (D-Calif.), 35 years. Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.), 39 years. In a fantastically talented nation of 300 million people, why should the same 535 people govern us from the two houses of Congress decade after decade? Once you are elected to Congress, you have a greater chance of dying in office than of being voted out. The Gerrymander has produced a Leviathan.

I then reproduce something called the Congressional Reform Act of 2010, a suggestion that has been blowing around the internet for at least four months now.

1. Term limits: 12 years only, with one of the possible options below:
A. Two six-year Senate terms.
B. Six two-year House terms.
C. One six-year Senate term and three two-year House terms.

2. No tenure and no pension:
A member of Congress collects a salary while in office and receives no pay when he or she is out of office.

3. Members of Congress (past, present, and future) participate in Social Security:
All funds in the congressional retirement fund move to the Social Security system immediately. All future funds flow into the Social Security system; members of Congress participate with the American people.

4. Members of Congress can purchase their own retirement plans just like all other Americans.

5. Members of Congress will no longer vote themselves a pay raise. Congressional pay will rise by the lower of the Consumer Price Index or 3 percent.

6. Members of Congress lose their current healthcare system and participate in the same healthcare system as the American people.

7. Members of Congress must equally abide in all laws they impose on the American people.

8. All contracts with past and present members of Congress are void effective one year after passage of the bill. The American people did not make contracts with congressmen, congressmen made all these contracts for themselves.

Some of it is repetitive. Number 1 would require a constitutional amendment. I think 5 should be just a flat 3% annual raise. It would give them lots of incentive to bring down inflation when it's at 10% or more. It's likely an average inflation figure over the years. And I have no idea what #8 means.

The term limits are the heart of it, however. This is what I say in the column:

First, term limits (which, by the way, would require a constitutional amendment) are undemocratic, yes, but they’re republican like our Constitution. That is, like so many provisions in the Constitution, they are a correction to our democracy designed to bring out the people’s better judgment, and to guard them against manipulation by political gamers. Gerrymandering has, to a large extent, made a farce out of popular election. This is a method of redrawing the boundaries of a congressional district in a way that maximizes the likelihood that an incumbent or his or her party will remain in power. In essence, the people get to choose the politicians only after the politicians have first chosen the people who will choose them. Do you see a problem?

Gerrymandering goes back at least as far as Eldridge Gerry for whom the practice is named. Ideally, there should be a complete redistricting from coast to coast (plus the outlying bits), undertaken by an impartial body ignorant of which party controls what areas at this point, giving attention simply to more or less equal representation between districts  as well as natural, civic, and community boundaries. But, because from a republican standpoint I would base the need for term limits on the corruption of the electoral process that comes from Gerrymandering, for that reason I would not apply these limits to Senators since, as statewide representatives, they have no control over who elects them.

The Perfectly Rational Party and You

Peter Wehner's WSJ article, "No, America Isn't Ungovernable" (Feb. 12, 2010) helps explain why the ruling Democrats at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue are behaving the way they are, and draws attention to the premise that underlies liberal-progressive arrogance in general.

The Democrats occupy the White House and have a majority in both houses of Congress. So why have they not been able to do everything they've wanted to do for the last 35 years, but haven't been able to? Three reasons. The people, the other party, and the system itself.

The people are stupid. They must be. If we have the perfect President and if he has proposed the most perfectly rational legislative agenda, then if the people do not support it in sufficient numbers they must be "a nation of dodos" (Time's Joe Klein) as well as childish, ignorant, and incoherent (Slate's Jacon Weisberg).

The Republicans are just nihilists. When you have the perfect President and you are presented with the most perfectly rational legislative agenda, there can be no disagreement except out of simple will to power, "pure nihilism for naked political gain" (Newsweek's Michael Cohen). So that must be what is behind Republican opposition to Democratic health care reform, cap-and-trade carbon emmisions control, card check union organizing rules, etc.

The Senate rules are outdated. If the Senate, where the Democrats barely had a supermajority until the election of Scott Brown in Massachusetts broke it, cannot pass a perfectly rational piece of legislation like the House version of health care reform for a perfect President, it must be "ominously dysfunctional" (Paul Krugman) and wholly incompatible with what is necessary for governing modern nation.

It is all premised on the liberal self-understanding (which it never crosses their minds to question): "We liberals are rational and philanthropic; anyone who disagrees with us must therefore be stupid and malicious."

For further insight into the liberal/progressive worldview and the mind of our President, you should also read George Will's recent column, "Progressives and the Growing Dependency Agenda."

Give Me Liberty or Give Me ObamaCare

During the 2008 election campaign, I was struck by how Barack Obama would describe someone's heartrending personal story, then leap immediately to suggesting a federal government solution. The assumption in between was that whatever unhappiness there is in life is the responsibility of the federal government to remedy. John Kerry did the same thing in 2004 because that is the way liberal Democrats think.

But that is not our system of government. Ours is what we call a "limited government." It is limited by the security of each one of us in our individual rights. They are rights against the power of government. Our government is limited also as to its ends. Its powers are enumerated and therefore delineated. We have established our government to accomplish specific tasks, and we have enumerated those tasks in the Constitution. That brings me to the third way that our government is limited. It is limited by law. Those who govern us govern only under law, ultimately a fundamental law we call the Constitution. Those who make the law must themselves submit to the laws they make.

If you judge Democrats not by what they say but by what they do, you can see that they don't believe in any of these features of limited government. Why should the enlightened class be limited in any way? To subject The People's Party to limitations of any sort is an act of hostility toward the people themselves. At any rate, that is how communist parties have reasoned for almost a hundred years, and that appears to be the way liberal Democrats think. And Barack Obama is a turbo-liberal Democrat.

Consider his plans for health insurance reform, plans in which he is in harmonious alliance with the "liberal bulls" in Congress. The fact that the scheme is baldly unconstitutional gives them no pause whatsoever. The suggestion that it is unconstitutional just means that they have to find a constitutional rationalization of some sort. After all, these people have long ago stopped caring what the Constitution actually says. If it is a "living constitution," then the challenge to those living under it is not to conform their legislative wishes to the Constitution, but by clever rhetoric and legal reasoning to conform the Constitution to the legislative wishes of the day. This is very opposite of the rule of law and of limited government.

As to the ends of government, people like Barack Obama cannot think of anything the federal government should not be doing. If there is suffering in the world, then the government is the most effective and most trustworthy agent to be addressing it. The broader the government, the more egalitarian the solution will be, and so the federal government is always the instrument of choice, whether directly or indirectly through its control of state and local governments. This may be a kind-hearted sentiment, but it is not a noble sentiment because it does not respect people's liberty. Even if Obama and all those in political alliance with him on this were entirely public spirited in their intentions (which any sober adult should admit is unlikely), their reforms would establish a structure for a less high-minded generation of elected and unelected government officials to lord it over a prostrate and helpless American people.

Blind to these dangers, however, and convinced of the self-evident moral superiority of their understanding, Obama's Democrats have launched themselves into the restructuring our health care system--one sixth of the American economy--expecting that the only opposition will come from selfish corporate interests, the Republican party which is the tool of those interests, and whatever rural simpletons and Christian fanatics the Republicans can deceive.

But opposition is coming from honest lovers of liberty and of the rule of law. Two such patriots are David B. Rivkin and Lee A. Casey, both of whom served in the Justice Department under Presidents Reagan and Bush. In "Mandatory Insurance is Unconstitutional" (Wall Street Journal, Sept. 18, 2009), they make the case that it goes beyond the powers of the federal government to force people to buy something they don't wish to buy. "Congress...cannot regulate simply because it sees a problem to be fixed." Since the Progressive era began almost a hundred years ago, government activists have justified most federal regulatory powers on the interstate commerce clause. The federal government can act to regulate interstate commerce (Article I, section 8), but it cannot punish you simply for sitting in your living room not buying health insurance. Rivkin and Casey take you through the history, the current health care reform proposals, and the bearing of the Constitution on it all. It's good read, and you are sure to look very intelligent and well informed to your friends for having read it.

Because Obama's Democrats don't care about the spirit of our system of government which is the spirit of liberty, they will look for a way around that restriction. Because there are others in the country who love liberty and the Constitution that supports it, they will fight him to the highest court in the land.

Dems Are Hunting Bulls To Extinction

It seems that the ruling Democrats are marshaling every arms of their power to neuter every expression American national virility--economic, financial, military, and diplomatic.

 

Here is the latest assault, this time to make sure that we never see another bull market.

 

Policies that set the pay for tens of thousands of bank employees nationwide would require approval from the Federal Reserve as part of a far-reaching proposal to rein in risk-taking at financial institutions. The Fed's plan would, for the first time, inject government regulators deep into compensation decisions traditionally reserved for the banks' corporate boards and executives.

 

Under the proposal, the Fed could reject any compensation policies it believes encourage bank employees -- from chief executives, to traders, to loan officers -- to take too much risk. Bureaucrats wouldn't set the pay of individuals, but would review and, if necessary, amend each bank's salary and bonus policies to make sure they don't create harmful incentives.

 

The plan under consideration "requires a vote by the central bank's board, but no congressional approval" ("Bankers Face Sweeping Curbs on Pay," Wall Street Journal, September 18, 2009).

 

Sen. Chris Dodd, that trustworthy steward of the public weal and co-author of the housing collapse, is taking up the task of combining the four banking agencies—the Federal Reserve, the Office of Thrift Supervision, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Comptroller of the Currency—into one superagency. Ever larger and more powerful government agencies always result in greater liberty for citizens and efficiency in government, right? ("Leading Senator Pushes New Plan to Oversee Banks," New York Times, Sept. 19, 2009.

 

The Democrats are the party of risk aversion. Prosecuting the CIA discourages risk taking by agents for our national security. Discouraging risk taking on Wall Street dampens our general prosperity. Government health insurance is just another step toward removing risk from daily American life generally. This is what Franklin Roosevelt had in mind when he proposed in his Four Freedoms speech (1941) that the federal government should guarantee everyone "freedom from want" and "freedom from fear." Just months before dying in office, in his 1944 State of the Union Address to Congress, he called for "a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all regardless of station, race, or creed." The first Bill of Rights was inadequate. These rights were to include:

• "The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the Nation;
• The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;
• The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;
• The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;
• The right of every family to a decent home;
• The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;
• The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;
• The right to a good education."

 Roosevelt states his purpose in this clearly: "All of these rights spell security. And after this war is won we must be prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these rights, to new goals of human happiness and well-being." As FDR saw it, the purpose is government is not to allow for the "pursuit of happiness," as the Founders and the authors of the original Bill of Rights saw it, but to provide "happiness and well-being" itself.


Of course, government has a legitimate, natural, and divinely appointed role in securing those under its care from threats to life, health, and property. But the purpose in this is to secure people in the liberty to live adult lives with all the challenges involving success and failure which that entails.

The Democrat's Cassandra

I suspect Camille Paglia, a teacher of classics at U Penn, is not long for the Democratic party, at least if it continues down its road to Stalinism. She said she proudly voted for Obama and is a proud Democrat; the only alternative is unpalatable because she probably cannot imagine getting on board with Chamber of Commerce types or fundamentalist Christians (she is a notorious pagan atheist) . She is however one of the few intellectually honest people on the left, so her reflections on her own party ought to be taken by them as a distant early warning. Actually, its pretty late, but this is still pretty cutting.

Why did it take so long for Democrats to realize that this year's tea party and town hall uprisings were a genuine barometer of widespread public discontent and not simply a staged scenario by kooks and conspirators? First of all, too many political analysts still think that network and cable TV chat shows are the central forums of national debate. But the truly transformative political energy is coming from talk radio and the Web -- both of which Democrat-sponsored proposals have threatened to stifle, in defiance of freedom of speech guarantees in the Bill of Rights. I rarely watch TV anymore except for cooking shows, history and science documentaries, old movies and football. Hence I was blissfully free from the retching overkill that followed the deaths of Michael Jackson and Ted Kennedy -- I never saw a single minute of any of it. It was on talk radio, which I have resumed monitoring around the clock because of the healthcare fiasco, that I heard the passionate voices of callers coming directly from the town hall meetings. Hence I was alerted to the depth and intensity of national sentiment long before others who were simply watching staged, manipulated TV shows

Why has the Democratic Party become so arrogantly detached from ordinary Americans? Though they claim to speak for the poor and dispossessed, Democrats have increasingly become the party of an upper-middle-class professional elite, top-heavy with journalists, academics and lawyers (one reason for the hypocritical absence of tort reform in the healthcare bills). Weirdly, given their worship of highly individualistic, secularized self-actualization, such professionals are as a whole amazingly credulous these days about big-government solutions to every social problem. They see no danger in expanding government authority and intrusive, wasteful bureaucracy. This is, I submit, a stunning turn away from the anti-authority and anti-establishment principles of authentic 1960s leftism.

How has "liberty" become the inspirational code word of conservatives rather than liberals? (A prominent example is radio host Mark Levin's book "Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto," which was No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list for nearly three months without receiving major reviews, including in the Times.) I always thought that the Democratic Party is the freedom party -- but I must be living in the nostalgic past. Remember Bob Dylan's 1964 song "Chimes of Freedom," made famous by the Byrds? And here's Richie Havens electrifying the audience at Woodstock with "Freedom! Freedom!" Even Linda Ronstadt, in the 1967 song "A Different Drum," with the Stone Ponys, provided a soaring motto for that decade: "All I'm saying is I'm not ready/ For any person, place or thing/ To try and pull the reins in on me."

But affluent middle-class Democrats now seem to be complacently servile toward authority and automatically believe everything party leaders tell them. Why? Is it because the new professional class is a glossy product of generically institutionalized learning? Independent thought and logical analysis of argument are no longer taught. Elite education in the U.S. has become a frenetic assembly line of competitive college application to schools where ideological brainwashing is so pandemic that it's invisible. The top schools, from the Ivy League on down, promote "critical thinking," which sounds good but is in fact just a style of rote regurgitation of hackneyed approved terms ("racism, sexism, homophobia") when confronted with any social issue. The Democratic brain has been marinating so long in those clichés that it's positively pickled.

AIG and The People's Republic of America

Let's not be fooled. A politician's outrage is generally a trick skillfully employed either to profit politically from someone else's wrongdoing or to cover up his or her own malfeasance.

The Democrats now running--and at the same time ruining--the country have opened wide all the valves of their outrage now that the A.I.G. bonus payments they approved have become public.

In this clip, Shepard Smith of Fox News lays out the facts exposing the present government's indignation as a contrivance to distract attention from their complicity in the scandal itself. "They could have stopped this. They made it happen." This is an impressive and passionately delivered step by step account of Congressional incompetence and cover-up. Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, and their pals have been like 10-year-olds driving an 18-wheel rig.



With the proposed 90% tax on executive bonuses in select companies, Congress is abusing their power to grab particular people's money in righteous indignation, either feigned or real, or a bit of both. This tax system is for funding legitimate government activity. Often it is also used for social engineering. This is neither. It is just grabbing the money of people you don't like. Government orchestrated lawlessness of this sort makes places like Russia and Africa regions that scare off investment, and thus become places of poverty that should be prosperous. Mark Steyn ("The Outrage Kabuki," National Review Online, Mar. 21, 2009) makes this point.

The massive expansion of government the president is planning is forever, and will ensure you that end your days in what Peggy Noonan calls “post-prosperity America.” More immediately, what message do you send to the world when legal contracts can be abrogated by retrospective confiscatory bills of attainder? You think that’s going to get anyone investing in America again?

The investor class invests in jurisdictions where the rules are clear and stable. Right now, Washington is telling the planet: In our America, there are no rules. Got a legally binding contract? We’ll tear it up. Refuse to surrender the dough? We’ll pass a law targeted at you, yes, you, Mr. Beau Nuss of 27 Plutocrat Gardens, Fatcatville. If you want a banana republic on steroids, this is great news.

The danger in all of this concerns not only economic liberty, but also political liberty. Here is Congressman Barney Frank (D-MA) demanding the names of people at A.I.G. who received the bonuses. CEO Liddy is concerned not only for the privacy but also the safety of these people. Frank doesn't care. He needs to put faces on the public enemies and give them names for fear that the face might become his. These people have broken no law. They are entitled to the protection of the law, and to the service of their government in enforcing contracts, not abrogating them.



John Hinderaker at Power Line asks, "Are We a Banana Republic?" (It's short, forceful, and right. Read the whole thing.)

If the Pelosi bill is actually enacted into law (which I still think is doubtful) and upheld by the courts, there is no limit to the arbitrary power of Congress. In that event, we have no property rights and there is no Constitution--no equal protection clause, no due process clause, no impairment of contracts clause, no bill of attainder/ex post facto law clause. Instead, we are living in a majoritarian tyranny.

Harold and I have written in this blog about the fascist or tyrannical tendencies of the Obama people in particular and the Democrats in general when they are fully empowered, as they are now. Once they identify you as an enemy or as an impediment to what they want to accomplish, they target you for destruction with every instrument of the public trust at their disposal, whether it is to silence you (conservative talk radio) or plunder you (the top 1% of income earners).

Our founding generation was certain of at least two things: the value of liberty because of human nobility, and the value of limited government because of human depravity. By contrast, radicals like V.I. Lenin and his Bolshevik cadres were entirely certain not only of the perfectibility of man through politics according to Marxist theory, but also of their own righteous incorruptibility on account of their ideological commitment. For this reason, they concentrated power in the state without restraint or scruple.

The Democrats who control Congress and the White House today are convinced that human vulnerability in a system of liberty is morally unacceptable, and thus that concentrating power in hands of the federal government is politically unquestionable. But in these certainties, they are closer to Lenin than Madison philosophically. The eager abandon with which they are concentrating and wielding power in Washington betrays an unblinking confidence in the implicit and unwavering public spiritedness of politically empowered Democrats--but only Democrats because the Democratic party is the People's Party.

That is not the political theory that has preserved liberty and generated prosperity for the last 220 years.

A Teachable Moment

One of our readers has brought forward a question that some of the rest of you may have been wondering about. And so in the spirit of transparency that Obama has promised but has studiously avoided delivering on, I wanted to respond out here on the page instead of in the comments section where "Dan" responded. I suspect that David will want to fill in the inevitable gaps I will leave in my open letter to you Dan, so we'll have his wisdom to draw on also.

Dan's response to the Mark Steyn "Quote of the Week", which appears immediately below, about socialism being much worse for America, is as follows:

"much worse"...?

"Geez, you guys are fairly fatalistic about the trajectory and/or overzealously fond of the past results here in the States. I'm not just responding to this post... it seems to be a theme. "Oh, no, Obama was elected, we're going to be a socialist state." First off... that's unlikely. And secondly, would it be so bad? What's wrong with the "European way" of things?~Dan

OK Dan, first, thanks for paying attention. Socialism has been a major theme on this page since the Obama candidacy hove into view 18 months ago. It took Joe the Plumber to make overt what had until then been covert in the national mediasphere, but David and I and many other bloggers were onto the implications of Obama's indirect speech and euphemisms from the beginning. I believe if you continue to pay attention, you will find that what Obama was hiding under the rubric of "change we can believe in", and "we are going to change America" is in fact an attempt to shift the American political and economic regime into as pure a strain of socialism as it is possible to accomplish.

I will take your points in order. “[Y]ou guys are fairly fatalistic about the trajectory [of the country]”.

I will speak for myself here, and let David qualify his own position as he sees fit; but for myself, you are correct. The left has never cared a whit for the constitution, except as a device to empower themselves while at the same time restricting their reactionary enemies—that would be all who like the constitution as it is, and don’t want wholesale changes made to what the Founders designed.

The Obama administration, in league with the Congressional despots Reid and Pelosi and all their henchmen, will see to it that most of their gains will be locked in, impossible to undo. They have a huge advantage in that the ever-expanding portion of federal and even state governments that are beyond public control are on their side—the Dems are the party of big government. For example, executive branch agencies—the Environmental Protection Agency will do as typical—are only loosely controlled by the political appointee (the Secretary in charge of the agency) and the president, or even the Congress. Career bureaucrats consider presidential administrations the “Christmas help”—i.e., the bureaucrats will be in place long after the politicians are gone. They have their own agenda—witness the way the CIA and State Departments beleaguered the Bush administration with those continuous and damaging leaks. How many leaks do you expect from those agencies under Obama? The federal bureaucracy is aligned with socializing the nation because that puts them in control of it. They are unionized, and they can never be fired.

Next, the federal courts are presided over by judges totally in sync with rewriting the constitution in the manner of common law—i.e., the law is whatever the courts say it is. So, through administrative fiat and judicial activism almost all the unconstitutional changes about to be wrought in the next four years will be difficult to undo—with four votes on the Supreme Court the only governmental backstop. Don’t forget the ominous move to take the census into the White House. Do you think all those hugely funded ACORN types are going to be unemployed the next two years? According to that Ur-socialist Joseph Stalin, “the people who vote are not important; it is the people who count the votes that are important”. This, along with huge changes in immigration policy, will lock down their political gains for generations if they get a way with it. Thus, the electoral remedy is being put even further out of reach.

And yes Dan, I am zealously, though not overzealously, fond of the “past results of this country.” Political, economic, and religious liberty is rare and precious. Despots don’t like freedom and they are in the business of increasing their power, under the guise of “helping”, at the expense of the people’s liberty. Liberty necessarily produces some messy processes and less than optimal outcomes. But breathing free air is something few human beings on this planet have experienced, and the American experience of freedom will mark the high point in political history, as Francis Fukuyama pointed out in The End of History and the Last Man. It doesn’t have to end, but I fear it will. The “Last Man” in Fukuyama’s title is Nietzsche’s prophesy: the last man is socialist man, enervated, emptied of virtue, and barely human.

That is the main reason socialism is inferior. It is antithetical to liberty and all that liberty produces, most especially human excellence. Look at what has happened to us already. The nanny state directs our lives in ways the Founders never dreamed any rational person would accept. Ronald Reagan said the scariest sentence you can hear is “We’re from the government and we’re here to help.” But the help governments bring only deadens initiative, removes personal responsibility, and actively competes with God and all religions for the spiritual allegiance of the people. Can you name a socialist country that has an active and engaged citizenry, a vibrant economy, or encourages religious faith? And because of its intrusiveness, it necessarily politicizes all of life. Suddenly, it is my business if you smoke or are too fat—it makes my health care costs more expensive, since we are all paying for each other’s health care. And instead of rationing resources and services by price, we will ration with waiting lines and coupon books. But there is always a way for some people to get to the front of the line or get more coupons, or avoid the whole regime, right? Orwell taught us that some are always more equal than others in socialism.

Frederich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom and The Constitution of Liberty conclusively showed that, merely from the stand point of information science, central planners—and planning and control is what socialism is all about—cannot have access to enough information to make the economic decisions that routinely occur each day across the millions of actors in an open and free market. The “commanding heights” conceit that Marx was so fond of—from analogy with 18th century warfare—is false, and is an excellent example of how metaphors and analogies can mislead us in our thinking. Yet it is a flattering idea to men like Barack Obama—that he, along with a cadre of wizards, can command the economy to rise and the oceans to recede like some grand field marshal. It has evolved into the notion that reality can be legislated.

What’s so bad about Euro socialism? Holy mackerel, where to begin. Aside from the truncated freedom, the social pathologies it breeds, and the economic stagnation and unemployment, what’s not to like? Economically, socialism is willing to accept a high number of permanently unemployed people who are placed in hammocks and provided for, in order to lock down a minuscule number of permanent jobs for people who can never be fired from jobs in moribund industries, and are taxed at confiscatory rates. I suppose it’s a good deal for those with jobs; but take John Rawls’ “initial position” idea, and suppose yourself to be one of those European sad-sacks locked out of a job because the State determined as a child you were not going to university. You want to live in government housing, cashing minimal government checks for doing nothing, with no prospect of useful employment? Swedes, Danes, and Swiss all kill themselves in disproportionate numbers directly related to this sort of ennui. Epidemic numbers of Brits are falling down drunks; Belgium and Holland are full of heroine addicts who smoke pot in bars between fixes—all of them on the dole.

There are some socialist arrangements that maybe don’t seem that bad—Sweden, Denmark, Finland, if you don’t care about individual freedom. But these countries and all of Europe have been riding behind the huge economic locomotive of the United States economy since WWII. We have provided for the defense of Europe, and they all spent the money that would have gone to defense budgets on welfare programs. They all depend on selling into our huge open and free market. What happens when we are taxed and regulated into mediocrity? Who’s going to buy all those BMW’s and Volvo’s? When the entire Western world is socialist, that will mark the beginnings of the real sorrows. America is still the last best hope of mankind, because of LIBERTY.

Besides, socialism is not American. It is an alien plant, as welcome and as useful as kudzu. It cuts against every line in our constitution. And that is the main reason I detest socialism and will continue to warn and rail against it—it is unconstitutional and un-American.

David Innes adds:

Harold, I echo your "Where do I begin?"

First it is interesting that Barack Obama wants to reduce the tax advantages for charitable giving quite significantly. Even Democrats are surprised (a) that he would do this, and (b) that he would do it at a time when charities are suffering huge declines in contributions. But this behavior is characteristic of socialists and of statists of all sorts. They want all relief in the hands of the government where it can be properly directed and where it can further establish the necessity and ubiquity of the state. For this reason also, people on the poltiical left are notoriously stingy givers. They give almost nothing to charity compared to conservatives, especially religious conservatives, as Arthur C. Brookes has documented.

The best refutation of socialism I have read came from Alexis de Tocqueville in his "Memoir on Pauperism." (That link takes you to a pdf download.) It's a short but life transforming read. His chief concern is for what it does to the citizen character and the human spirit. It ennervates, infantilizes, and enslaves.

Tocqueville's chapters on soft despotism in Democracy In America (Part II, part 4) are also essential reading. We're vigilant against the tyranny of the majority, but we get blindsided by what he calls democratic despotism. "The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd."

He adds, "They devise a sole, tutelary, and all-powerful form of government, but elected by the people. They combine the principle of centralization and that of popular sovereignty; this gives them a respite: they console themselves for being in tutelage by the reflection that they have chosen their own guardians. Every man allows himself to be put in leading-strings, because he sees that it is not a person or a class of persons, but the people at large who hold the end of his chain."

Another short but great work advocating individual liberty and thus refuting state socialism is Milton Friedman's classic, Capitalism and Freedom. Here's chapter one.

Note this also. If Barack Obama succeeds with his changes to the tax system, there will be a majority of Americans who pay no federal tax at all. Thus, the voting majority will be able to benefit themselves with one spending program after another while charging it to the minority. We need to remember Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's counsel: "The trouble with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money." It's a strategy for national disaster.

If our public schools would provide an education that actually fit our young people for life in our particular regime, this good regime--industrious and civic spirited life--then we would not have to make these arguments.

Thanks, Dan. This was a useful exercise.

A Merely Political Stimulus

Harvard economist Robert Barro, also at the Hoover Institution, gives a technical, though simple-so-that-I-can-understand-it, explanation of why the Democrats' "stimulus" spending package will fail to stimulate anything, apart from perhaps Chris Matthews' leg.

Read "Government Spending Is No Free Lunch" (Wall Street Journal, Jan. 22, 2009).

But, in terms of fiscal-stimulus proposals, it would be unfortunate if the best Team Obama can offer is an unvarnished version of Keynes's 1936 "General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money." The financial crisis and possible depression do not invalidate everything we have learned about macroeconomics since 1936.

Much more focus should be on incentives for people and businesses to invest, produce and work. On the tax side, we should avoid programs that throw money at people and emphasize instead reductions in marginal income-tax rates -- especially where these rates are already high and fall on capital income. Eliminating the federal corporate income tax would be brilliant.

I find it interesting that we are speaking of this stimulus package as something necessary for "jump starting the economy," as though the economy were a car, and as though it were at a stand still.

But this is rhetoric in the service of covering up a duplicitous government. The Democrats are not interested primarily in economic recovery. That will come eventually, one way or another, in the natural cycle of things. They see this crisis and the unprecedented breadth of power we have handed them as an opportunity to fund "just about every pent-up Democratic proposal of the last 40 years" ("A 40-Year Wish List," Wall Street Journal editorial, Jan. 28, 2009).

Also of interest is that 57% of Americans believe that tax cuts are generally good for the economy compared to 17% who believe they are bad, according to Rasmussen Reports.

Congressional Motors

From the WSJ this morning, under the headline "US Could Take Stakes in Big Three":

WASHINGTON -- Congress and the White House inched toward a financial rescue of the Big Three auto makers, negotiating legislation that would give the U.S. government a substantial ownership stake in the industry and a central role in its restructuring.

But Iowahawk was all over this story way back on November 24th, when he leaked the advertising campaign being considered for the new era of nationalization being planned by the Pelosi Democats.

It's got a "return to the golden 70's" kind of feel to it. What do you think?

************

Innes adds:

Ask any American this question. Would the company that employs you be a better company, make a better product, be more innovative, if it were run by the government? (FYI: Rasmussen finds that "Just 14% Say Government Will Run Big Three Better.")

My closest personal experience with a government run company is the Long Island Rail Road. I like them. The conductors are friendly and the trains run more or less on time. They are yet another reason that I am glad I don't live in New Jersey. But the LIRR runs at a huge loss and the trains travel at half the speed they did forty years ago. That is not what made America great.

How is it that these three companies are faring so poorly in the auto market, whereas Toyota, Honda, Hyundai etc. are all turning profits selling American built cars? Does Congress have any clue? If they did understand, would they have the political will to do what is necessary to free these companies to make a profit? Given their illicit relationship with the unions (it is illicit for Congress, a publicly interested body, to be controlled by unions which are organized to promote narrowly private interests) and their fixation with regulation, especially environmental regulation, it seems highly unlikely.

If the federal government takes control of the banks, the auto industry and the health care system, why should it not also proceed to all the "commanding heights" of the economy? Why should these huge economic entities that control the lives of so many ordinary Americans not come under social control for the benefit of the people instead of the few? As the first post-war British prime minister put it, this would be "the embodiment of our socialist principle of placing the welfare of the nation before any section" or narrow interest. He advocated "a mixed economy developing toward socialism.... The doctrines of abundance, of full employment, and of social security require the transfer to public ownership of certain major economic forces and the planned control in the public interest of many other economic activities."

Perhaps Barack Obama will be remembered as the American Clement Atlee.

If so, we will have to suffer through decades of economic stagnation and self-inflicted misery until we learn our lesson and, in response to our tearful prayers, the Lord mercifully raises up an American Margaret Thatcher to remedy the whole mess.

What Democracy Hath Wrought

The WSJ's Matthew Kaminski's Weekend Interview is with Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union-SEIU, a key interest group among the coalition that is the Democrat party. Union money was second only to Soros money in funding the huge national rush to take government back for the people. One should ignore what the titular heads of the party officially say: it is mostly legerdemain, meant to placate and distract the public, the way a magician misdirects attention in order to pull off a trick, or the way a parent distracts a fussy little one. It is a rarity, always considered a gaffe, when any of them out with what they are really up to. Obama's "spread the wealth" thing for example. Recall the war-room mobilization across the media to renounce the slander of "socialism" against the One? Unlike conservatives, who are unapologetic about being conservatives, it is hard to find a liberal besides Barney Frank who will accept the label. They know most people don't want what they are selling. They have to use subterfuge, Orwellian naming tricks, stealth legislation, the courts, and regulation through executive branch agencies to effect their policies. If taken to a vote by the people, most of the liberal agenda would still be a gleam in the eye of Wiliam Ayers and at a wholesome distance from reality.

Thus, the expectations, proclivities, and demands of leftist interest groups that have delivered us into the hands of the Democrats deserve more attention than those of elected Democrats, who, after all, must live in the limelight and be reelected. The Code Pinks, the Sierra Clubs, the Emily's Lists, NARAL, the trial lawyers, labor unions, ad nauseum, are better barometers than the Democrat political class per se. Kaminski notes in the piece that "universal health care, widespread unionization, stronger regulations on business, profit-sharing for employees, higher taxes -- all that sounds like Western Europe. Mr. Stern considers that a worthy model."

Says Mr Stern:

"I think Western Europe as much as we used to make fun of it has made different trade-offs which may have ended up with a little more unemployment but a lot more equality."

If one considers eleven or twelve percent unemployment merely "a little more", then perhaps that vaunted "equality" might seem a bargain. But then there is a lot packed into that term "equality" under socialism. Those who have seen the Europe of the working and welafare class--those Mr Stern and his ilk pretend to represent so well--understand that the equality offered by socialism is equality of poverty, with a distinctly unimpoverished upper class, reeking of solicitous concern for the masses. Ever seen the size of a flat in Rome or Paris? See what cars they drive in any European city? Wonder why everyone wears black in the cities? (black clothes don't show dirt, and since many people have only small clothing budgets, they must wear the same suits over and over. This partly accounts for the smells on a bus.) On the other hand, for those with union or government jobs--the majority of those who have jobs--things are pretty cushy--short work weeks, Adriatic vacations, retirement at fifty.

Until the thing collapses, which it must. Our unionized auto industry is European socialism writ small, and it is the model for the future Messrs. Soros, Stern, and all the leading lights among the Democrats are bringing to a town near you. We're all GM now.

(Not So) Distant Early Warning

How will our new totally Democrat government "rule" (to use a little of their own fascistic lingo.)? Here's a heads up from J.G. Thayer over at Commentary magazine's blogsite. Three events unfolding simultaneously, under direct Democrat party management are once again telegraphing what the hard left thinks of the liberties and rights our country was founded with. Actually these are illustrative of the difference between "governing" and "ruling", where the regime is based on the liberal values of openness, transparency, respect for individual rights against government, and consent of the governed--principles not shared by the hard Left. Here is Thayer's list, which I'm afraid will only lengthen as this presidency unfolds:

• The so-called "Employee Free Choice Act", which is actually intended to discourage free choice in voting in union representation by discarding secret ballots; Democrats are for this? Oh wait, we're talking about the Stalinist wing of the party here...but as Thayer says, "Thank heavens that unions have no history of violence, intimidation, corruption, or deception. Because if they did, the potential for the abuse of this system would be instantly realized"

• Proposition 8 in California, where for the second time, those bigoted, hard core conservative Californians voted to preserve the ancient definition of marriage under their Constitution. Prominent supporters are being targeted now for revenge--with what we have been instructed are hate crimes when done unto homosexuals and other favored groups. Interestingly too, in this Alice in Wonderland world abuilding, the "n" word is absolutely justified when spewed by gay rights advocates. The people of California who dared to exercise this particular opinion must be made to pay, and be made an example of for any future move not to the liking of the newly ascendant "rulers."

• The Norm Coleman/Al Franken Senate election, being stolen right out in the open for all to see. Al Franken? What are you people thinking? Democrats, in the wake of the elections of 2000 and 2004 have worked to capture as many Secretary of State offices as possible--these are the officials, like Catherine Harris in Florida, who certify the votes and decide discrepancies. The massive fraud we already know about in this case makes it hard to believe this is happening in America, but there is only more of the same brown shirt shredding of state and the federal constitutions in store for us.

The New New Left is constrained, it appears, only by the limits of their own audacity, because as it happens, way too many state and federal benches are held by radical sympathizers for there to be much of a judicial backstop for the rule of law-our law. So, as the rule of law goes by the boards, the rule of the Rulers oozes into its place, and we will see what a government paid for with hundreds of Soros millions looks like.

As Bob Dylan saw in a moment of twilight clarity, It's not dark yet, but it's getting there.

The Simplistic Notion of Liberty

It is interesting when people on the political left in American politics say explicitly the deplorably unjust things they actually believe. We saw this during the campaign when Michelle Obama said that the popular support for her husband made her proud of her country for the first time in her adult life. Or when Barack Obama told Joe the Plumber that the government needs to use the tax system to spread the wealth around.

Here is Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA) sharing what is a common notion among the Democrats:

Now in the last seven years we have had the highest corporate profit ever in American history. Highest corporate profit! We’ve had the highest productivity! The American worker has produced more per person at any time, but it hasn’t been shared, and that’s the problem because we have been guided by a Republican administration who believes in this simplistic notion that people who have wealth are entitled to keep it and they have an antipathy towards the means of redistributing wealth.

Is it a "simplistic" notion that people should be secure in their property, and that one of the fundamental purposes of government is to provide that security? To state it more pointedly, is it a simplistic notion that government should protect us against robbers, and not become itself a robber? What is government-enforced redistribution of wealth but the less wealthy majority pillaging the more wealthy minority through the coercive power of the state?

Take it to the next level. Is it a simplistic notion that people who have lives should be able to keep them? Given President-elect Barack Obama's and the Democratic Party's stand and record on abortion, infanticide, the "harvesting" of prenatal human life for medical research--and who knows what else?--it is obvious that the Democrats see that as a "simplistic notion" as well. (This post only begins to summarize Obama's radical commitment to killing the unborn under every imaginable circumstance.)

Consider also the enthusiasm among Democrats for the so-called Fairness Doctrine by which private broadcasters exercising their political free speech in the public square would have to balance conservative expressions with liberal ones. (For background, read this 1993 summary of the issue from the Heritage Foundation.) Is it "simplistic" to think that people who have opinions are entitled to express them? To the Democrats, apparently not. (Hear it from the very powerful New York Senator, Charles Schumer, in The Hill, Nov. 4, 2008.)

It appears that in the ruling Democratic view, it is a simplistic notion that those who have liberty should be entitled to exercise it and live securely in it.

The "Energy Policy" of the Dems--NO YOU CAN"T

See if you can detect a pattern here:

"When I was asked earlier about the issue of coal, you know, under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket. Even regardless of what I say about whether coal is good or bad. Because I’m capping greenhouse gases, coal power plants, you know, natural gas, you name it, whatever the plants were, whatever the industry was, uh, they would have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money. They will pass that money on to consumers."




“No coal plants here in America! Build 'em, if they're gonna build 'em, over there [China] and make 'em clean because they're killing ya.”




"Coal makes us sick. Oil makes us sick. It's global warming. It's ruining our country. It's ruining our world."




"So, if somebody wants to build a coal plant, they can. It’s just that it will bankrupt them."




No matter what area of policy, no matter which part of the "national interest" you consider, (many aspects of which have been addressed on this blog) this hard left juggernaut we see bearing down on us like a runaway coal train brings with it nothing of benefit to this country. It's hard to imagine what our acknowledged enemies would do differently to harm our economy.

If some foreign enemy moved to stop us from drilling our own oil, while at the same time finding a way to shut down our coal industry, I hope Americans would recognize it as an act of aggression. It looks to me like everything the Democrats are planning is an act of aggression, many times in the literal sense of the word.

Where do Democrats want to take this country, and what is it going to look like when we get there?

From a Little ACORN, a Mighty Oak Tree Grows

Stanley Kurtz, doing one of the jobs the mainstream media just won't do, lays out the nexus behind the financial scandal of lowering morgage requirements to such an extent that a fair portion of world financial markets are in jeapardy ("Planting Seeds of Disaster: ACORN, Barack Obama, and the Democratic Party").

You might want to file Kurtz's piece away for future reference, as the Democrats attempt their whitewash of this affair in the coming months.

I see this as diabolical--I use the word advisedly--on two levels. On the front end or surface, ACORN and their minions obtained handily their ostensible goals--more mortgages for poor people who would be in ACORN's debt, and more fees and government subsidies for making the arrangements flowing into their own coffers. But the larger picture involves the Cloward/Fox-Piven ploy--pressing democratic/capitalist structures to their limits and beyond in order to destroy them, create crisis, and thus pave the way for justified emergency intrusion by government to prevent societal or economic collapse. It is standard Marxist/Leninist doctrine embodied in the motto "the worse the better", given its American gloss by the now ubiquitous Saul Alinsky.

This banking crisis I believe must be seen in this context to be fully understood. The radical Left has spent the decades since 1968 perfecting this strategy across all boundaries of scale, and this happens to be their biggest score to date. But there are others are to follow--think of the oil drilling ban, the coming collapse of Social Security and Medicare, the prospect of nationalized health care, and large under-funded union pension funds--unless Republicans wake up and realize the depth and breadth of the subversion that has been going on right under their noses--Hyde Park, San Francisco, Madison, Manhattan, San Antonio, Berkeley, Boulder...you get the point.

If McCain and his campaign can't figure out how to bring this up before the election, the Obama administration that results will be full of these same jackals that Kurtz mentions, bent on taking us further into the Euro/ transnational leftist swamp where the rest of the West resides, and where voters have little more than a ceremonial role to play in their government.