Another Cheer for Regress

I would like to start the new year off by posting the link to George Will's recent James Madison lecture at Princeton, "Can Someone from the Class of 1771 Save the Nation from Someone from the Class of 1879?" Will himself is someone from the class of 1968. This is a video of the lecture. I have not found the transcript on the web.

This lecture is another of his serious assaults against the Wilsonian progressive project that President Barack Obama and Pelosi & Reid's 111th Congress have trampled the Constitution and loud and clear expressions of public opinion to advance these last two years.

This lecture follows upon but does not repeat his Cato Institute Milton Friedman Prize lecture, "Not a State Broken People" in which he introduced the metaphor of the two Princetonians.

Dems Just Not That Into Economics

This is an expanded version of my column at WORLDmag.com (chart and video transcript).

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Daniel Klein's article, "Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?" (Wall Street Journal, June 8, 2010), is one you want to clip and save for handy reference. He documents how characteristically more ignorant liberals are of basic economics than conservatives are. Politicians in general are poorly versed in the dismal science, but the further left you are on the political spectrum, the more clueless you are likely to be on the subject. This is alarming because, while politics is not reducible to economics, most of what government does involves economics, directly or indirectly, and the further left the politician, the more likely he is to occupy himself with economic matters...sadly.

Here is an example of a question Klein posed to a range of respondents:

Consider one of the economic propositions in the December 2008 poll: "Restrictions on housing development make housing less affordable." People were asked if they: 1) strongly agree; 2) somewhat agree; 3) somewhat disagree; 4) strongly disagree; 5) are not sure. Basic economics acknowledges that whatever redeeming features a restriction may have, it increases the cost of production and exchange, making goods and services less affordable. There may be exceptions to the general case, but they would be atypical.

Therefore, we counted as incorrect responses of "somewhat disagree" and "strongly disagree." This treatment gives leeway for those who think the question is ambiguous or half right and half wrong. They would likely answer "not sure," which we do not count as incorrect.


In this case, percentage of conservatives answering incorrectly was 22.3%, very conservatives 17.6% and libertarians 15.7%. But the percentage of progressive/very liberals answering incorrectly was 67.6% and liberals 60.1%. The pattern was not an anomaly.

Liberals generally answer with what they want to be true, what they believe ought to be true, or perhaps with what they can force to be true with properly executed legislation, not with what actually happens in the world when it is left to itself. Klein observes that, "the left has trouble squaring economic thinking with their political psychology, morals and aesthetics." May I venture to say that they don't think; they feel?

Klein ends with this: "Governmental power joined with wrongheadedness is something terrible, but all too common. Realizing that many of our leaders and their constituents are economically unenlightened sheds light on the troubles that surround us."

David Ranson provides us with an all too real example of this economic ignorance and wishful thinking in "The Revenue Limits of Tax and Spend" (WSJ, May 17, 2010).

The feds assume a relationship between the economy and tax revenue that is divorced from reality. Six decades of history have established one far-reaching fact that needs to be built into fiscal calculations: Increases in federal tax rates, particularly if targeted at the higher brackets, produce no additional revenue. For politicians this is truly an inconvenient truth.

This little nugget of the way things work even has a scientific sounding name: "Hauser's Law." On the basis of 60 years of consistent data, W. Kurt Hauser of the Hoover Institution found that there is an impenetrable ceiling on what wealth squeezing government can ring out of the economy in the form of tax revenues. No matter how we try, federal tax receipts will not exceed about 19% of GDP under the best of circumstances. Under present conditions, which are far from the best, any attempt to raise taxes will reduce GDP and thus actually reduce revenues. This article is another one for my "keeper" file.

But liberals don't care. They're not actually interested in paying for anything as long as deficit spending allows them to charge it to generations who will not be voting until after they are out of office. They are also just not that interested in economics at all. What matters to them is "fairness," even if it means bankrupting the country to pay for it.

Consider this golden moment during the final stages of the 2008 Democratic primaries. Barack Obama, saying what he knows the American people believe and want to hear him say, but what is completely alien to his way of operating, says he believes in paying as you go. But in response to Charles Gibson's question, he shows his complete indifference to economic constraints when it comes to the egalitarian moral imperative of "fairness."

GIBSON: All right. You have, however, said you would favor an increase in the capital gains tax. As a matter of fact, you said on CNBC, and I quote, "I certainly would not go above what existed under Bill Clinton," which was 28 percent. It's now 15 percent. That's almost a doubling, if you went to 28 percent.

But actually, Bill Clinton, in 1997, signed legislation that dropped the capital gains tax to 20 percent.

OBAMA: Right.

GIBSON: And George Bush has taken it down to 15 percent.

OBAMA: Right.

GIBSON: And in each instance, when the rate dropped, revenues from the tax increased; the government took in more money. And in the 1980s, when the tax was increased to 28 percent, the revenues went down.

So why raise it at all, especially given the fact that 100 million people in this country own stock and would be affected?

OBAMA: Well, Charlie, what I've said is that I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness.

We saw an article today which showed that the top 50 hedge fund managers made $29 billion last year -- $29 billion for 50 individuals. And part of what has happened is that those who are able to work the stock market and amass huge fortunes on capital gains are paying a lower tax rate than their secretaries. That's not fair.

And what I want is not oppressive taxation. I want businesses to thrive, and I want people to be rewarded for their success. But what I also want to make sure is that our tax system is fair and that we are able to finance health care for Americans who currently don't have it and that we're able to invest in our infrastructure and invest in our schools.

And you can't do that for free.

OBAMA: And you can't take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children and our grandchildren, and then say that you're cutting taxes, which is essentially what John McCain has been talking about.

And that is irresponsible. I believe in the principle that you pay as you go. And, you know, you don't propose tax cuts, unless you are closing other tax breaks for individuals. And you don't increase spending, unless you're eliminating some spending or you're finding some new revenue. That's how we got an additional $4 trillion worth of debt under George Bush. That is helping to undermine our economy. And it's going to change when I'm president of the United States.

GIBSON: But history shows that when you drop the capital gains tax, the revenues go up.

OBAMA: Well, that might happen, or it might not. It depends on what's happening on Wall Street and how business is going. I think the biggest problem that we've got on Wall Street right now is the fact that we got have a housing crisis that this president has not been attentive to and that it took John McCain three tries before he got it right.

And if we can stabilize that market, and we can get credit flowing again, then I think we'll see stocks do well. And once again, I think we can generate the revenue that we need to run this government and hopefully to pay down some of this debt.

Senator Obama weaves back and forth between advocating fairness at the expense of revenue considerations, and sounding fiscally responsible for the right-of-center American voter. But the two come crashing together in an embarrassing display of either contradiction or hypocrisy--Gibson caught it--when he says, "But what I also want to make sure is that our tax system is fair and that we are able to finance health care for Americans who currently don't have it and that we're able to invest in our infrastructure and invest in our schools. And you can't do that for free." In other words, we want a tax system that seems fair to a progressive liberal, and yet one that can pay for the generous social programs which that same sense of fairness requires.

The Senator likely just didn't see the contradiction because he is what Klein calls progressive/very liberal, and so he thinks primarily in sentimentally moral terms,* not economic ones, and simply expects economic reality to support those judgments. That is also how Obama the President has been behaving. Wall Street ought to be punished, even though a crippled and fettered Wall Street cannot fuel a recovery. BP ought to be prosecuted and pillaged as soon as possible, even though a bankrupt BP can neither clean up the spill nor compensate anyone for damages.

That, at least, is the generous interpretation.

*One can also think rationally about morality, of course, but liberals will have nothing to do with it because it leads to moral absolutism, which they absolutely abhor.

We are Engaged in a Great Civil War

The depth of our political divide in America constitutes a civil war, the one side preserving the regime and the other side working to overthrow it. But thankfully it's a cold war, not a shooting war. All that we need for preserving the republic against it's progressivist overthrowers is to re-school the American public in their heritage of liberty.

I have been writing recently about the movement of American government in dangerous directions toward a subtle, seductive, but very real form of despotism. Most recently I published "The Temptation to Dictatorship" at WORLDmag.com, a further reflection on what I wrote here in "The Dictatorship of Hope and Change." We hear Tom Friedman and Andrea Mitchell musing openly on Meet The Press about the public benefits that would result from allowing Barack Obama and his soul-mates in Congress to suspend the Constitution for a day and really put things right. This was not a careless thought. Friedman was just following up on what he stated in one his recent books. But only Paul Gigot expressed shock and incredulity. When he did, the political cognoscenti around him just blinked and went on.

This dangerous indifference to the institutions of liberty is not limited to a few reckless talking heads on a Sunday news show. It pervades the liberal establishment. And if it were only indifference, we would be in better shape than we are. George Will has drawn national attention to the principled hostility toward our very form of government that has characterized the Democratic Party for almost a hundred years, and which Barack Obama has raised to the level of mortal struggle.

Today, as it has been for a century, American politics is an argument between two Princetonians -- James Madison, Class of 1771, and Woodrow Wilson, Class of 1879. Madison was the most profound thinker among the Founders. Wilson, avatar of "progressivism," was the first president critical of the nation's founding. Barack Obama's Wilsonian agenda reflects its namesake's rejection of limited government.

In my WORLDmag.com column today, "Our Present Civil Cold War," I continue Will's train of thought to what I think is its implied but unstated conclusion. (Michael Lind at Salon.com responds to Will's thesis here.)

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What Wilson began, the Great Depression interrupted, but Franklin Roosevelt took it up again with great energy in the New Deal. Lyndon Johnson carried it forward with the Great Society, and now Barack Obama has raised this war against limited, constitutional government to the level of mortal struggle.


Now we are engaged in a great civil cold war. It is a political war between the advocates of limited and unlimited government, between those who support the Founding and the Constitution as amended and the self-described progressives who, by definition, reject what the Founding Fathers bequeathed to us in favor of what Chief Justice Earl Warren called “evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society.”

Will takes his prompt from a new book by William Voegeli, Never Enough: America’s Limitless Welfare State. In the progressive view of politics, there is no limiting principle for government. Writes Voegeli, “Lacking a limiting principle, progressivism cannot say how big the welfare state should be but must always say that it should be bigger than it currently is.” We can see this in President Roosevelt’s 1944 “Economic Bill of Rights” speech, in which he declared the commitment of his government to, among other things,

...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.

Thus rights become government entitlements that don’t limit government, but instead empower and expand it.

For progressives, the purpose of government is not to protect certain natural rights that in turn limit the government itself. This is the political theory of the Founding and the Constitution. Rather, government’s job is to discover new rights that come to light as we morally evolve, i.e., as we progress.

Our choice is between two very different forms of government. Limited government stands opposite progressive government of unlimited reach. Individual liberty stands opposite federally guaranteed personal security. Our system of checks and balances stands opposite the popularly unaccountable and trans-political bureaucracy. In the Great Civil War, we fought—as Lincoln put it—for “government of the people, by the people, and for the people.” This new struggle is a domestic cold war for that same understanding of freedom. We need to be clear that there is a fundamental difference between these politically divergent ways of life, and that the choice is now clearly before us. Otherwise we will simply slip peacefully into what Alexis de Tocqueville called “soft despotism,” the way a freezing man welcomes the embrace of death like a comforting lover.

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Reading List:

Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, James Madison, The Federalist Papers.

Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy In America.

Walter McDougall, Freedom Just Around the Corner: A New American History (HarperCollins, 2004).

R.J. Pestritto. Woodrow Wilson and the Roots of Modern Liberalism (Rowman & Littlefield, 2005).

Amity Shlaes, The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression (HarperCollins, 2007).

Matthew Spalding, We Still Hold These Truths: Rediscovering Our Principles, Reclaiming Our Future (ISI, 2009).

William Voegeli, Never Enough: America’s Limitless Welfare State (Encounter, 2010).

James Caeser, Nature and History in American Political Development (Harvard UP, 2008).

Also, anything by Martin Diamond, Charles Kesler, Forrest McDonald, or Herbert Storing.

You should also explore through these websites and catalogues the considerable labors that thoughtful patriots have undertaken over that past two generations or so in the re-schooling of America in its education for liberty.

Ashbrook Center for Public Affairs
The Constitution Society
The Federalist Society
The Founders' Constitution
The Heritage Foundation
The Intercollegiate Studies Institute
The Jack Miller Center
Lehrman American Studies Center
Liberty Fund

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."

Tyranny at Home, Naivete Abroad

Here are two of the wisest and most observant students of politics in our day commenting on President Obama's first year in office: Harvey Mansfield and Charles Krauthammer, a professor of government and a columnist.

In "What Obama Isn't Saying: The Apolitical Politics of Progressivism" (The Weekly Standard, Feb. 8, 2010), Professor Mansfield unpacks the President's progressive-tyrannical ambitions from his seemingly innocent statement, "I am not the first president to take up this cause, but I am determined to be the last."

Obama is not our king. But he uses the monarchical branch of our republic without embarrassment to project the nonpartisan image of a monarch. He has not been a strong president; he has deferred to Congress, perhaps to his cost. But he likes the aura of monarchy and uses it skillfully to transcend partisan argument.

What every progressive wants is to put the particular issue he espouses beyond political dispute. ... Next to liberty of the mind, there is no more important liberty than political liberty. This means that no partisan victory is permanent and that we shall always return to different versions of the same questions. Progress can never make political liberty obsolete by solving the problems that we contend over. Those who want to put an issue like health care “beyond politics” simply want an imposed political solution to their liking.

Charles Krauthammer delivered the Margaret Thatcher Freedom Lecture at the Heritage Foundation on January 19, 2010. It is published as "The Age of Obama: Anno Domini 2." Pulling together the most stunning pronouncements from the the President's leading foreign policy statements leaves one with little more to say than, "God help us!" Krauthammer is not gentle in his responses.

In his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech in Oslo (Dec. 10, 2009), Obama defended the use of war and noted the existence of evil in the world:

But as a head of state sworn to protect and defend my nation, I cannot be guided by their examples alone. I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people. For make no mistake: Evil does exist in the world. A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler's armies. Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda's leaders to lay down their arms. To say that force may sometimes be necessary is not a call to cynicism -- it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason.

Krauthammer takes no comfort from this.

Indeed, when a President's recognition of evil or rejection of pacifism jumps out at us as something startling and novel, that tells us much--none of it good--about the baseline from which he is operating: the woolly internationalism Obama has been operating under during his first year in office.

In his address to the U.N. General Assembly in September 2009, President Obama told the world on our behalf:

In an era when our destiny is shared, power is no longer a zero-sum game. No one nation can or should try to dominate another nation. No world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will succeed. No balance of power among nations will hold. The traditional divisions between nations of the South and the North make no sense in an interconnected world; nor do alignments of nations rooted in the cleavages of a long-gone Cold War.

I does not take a gifted political analyst to see the problems here. Nonetheless, here he is.

Where does one begin? Power is no longer a zero-sum game? Tell that to the demonstrators in the streets of Tehran. Tell that to the Tamil Tigers or to the newly liberated Baltic states.

No nation should try to dominate another? Perhaps, but that's merely adolescent utopianism. The world is a Hobbesian state of nature in which the struggle for domination is the very essence of international life.

No nation can dominate another? This is simple nonsense. How can a man of such intelligence-- and a president of the United States--even allow himself to utter these words?

But most disturbing is the notion that what he called "the cleavages of a long-gone Cold War" are obsolete and senseless. These cleavages were actually the dividing line between free and unfree, between democratic and Communist, between the West and an Evil Empire that had stamped out the face of freedom in half of Europe and in an archipelago of far-flung colonies from Vietnam to Cuba to Nicaragua.

This was no accidental dividing line. Yet in place of this so-called cleavage, Obama wants to bring about a new 21st-century world of universal understanding and accommodation. And for that, the U.S. is to be the facilitator, the healer, the interlocutor, the moral example--led, of course, by the man floating above it all, "a fellow citizen of the world," as he called himself in Berlin.

While we hoped that this was the height of the President's naivete, he has actually continued to climb. When you take a state senator and elevate him in short order to the White House you get community organizing as a model for international relations. Yes, literally. Read on.

And because good things come in three, go on to read Fouad Ajami's "The Spell is Broken" (Wall Street Journal, Feb. 2, 2010). "Mr. Obama himself authored the tale of his own political crisis. He had won an election, but he took it as a plebiscite granting him a writ to remake the basic political compact of this republic." He is following up on the essay he published just before the election, "Obama and the Politics of Crowds" (Wall Street Journal, October 30, 2008). Ajami knows a Third World demagogue when he sees one, but this one is finding himself out of place in this constitutional republic.