On The Road Again...er, Still

In this morning's WSJ, Arthur Brooks, president of The American Enterprise Institute, and Congressman Paul Ryan (R, Wisconsin) pose the underlying question the Obama administration and its Tea Party tormentors have pressed to the fore: Do we still want our traditional American free enterprise system, or do we prefer a European-style social democracy? ("The Size of Government and the Choice This Fall")

In combination with Michael Barone's "Gangster Government Stifles Criticism of Obamacare", the tyrannical nature of the Obami and their new wave of progressivism is inescapable, confirming in spades (can I say that?) the darkest premonitions and warnings appearing here at Principalities and Powers and innumerable other outlets of enlightened opinion and correct reasoning. A few minutes perusing the archives will show our insights were neither overwrought, as some suggested, nor misplaced. And if such a review does not persuade, or is too much work, it should be sufficient to note that both David and I are extraordinarily good looking. For a couple of academic geeks, that is.

But back to Brooks and Ryan.

Deeply embedded in both Brook's and Ryan's education, and appearing briefly in the article, is Friederich Hayek's The Road to Serfdom. Like many another young skull full of mush, the Road to Serfdom was the book that launched, some thirty years ago, my early attempts at serious political and economic thinking. After reading the WSJ piece, I went to my office bookshelves and found my battered, underlined, highlighted, marginalia-laced copy and glanced through it this morning. Like that other ur-text of conservatism, Burke's Some Reflections on the Revolution in France, nearly every sentence makes an epigram or forms the topic for extended reflections. I recall being taken with the epigrams Hayek attached to his chapters, from authors and sources I had mostly never heard of at the time, but that had the effect on me as a reader he intended--it solidified his place in a tradition of thought, and authenticated the accuracy of the critique he brought to socialism and all its works.

Accordingly, for the enlightenment of our readership, and in lieu of quoting the too-many apropos statements from the book, here are Hayek's chapter titles and the epigrams he attached--every one remaining pertinent to this era of "transformational change".

Dedication Page: To The Socialists Of All Parties
It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once--David Hume

Introduction: Few discoveries are more irritating than those which expose the pedigree of ideas--Lord Acton

Chapter I The Abandoned Road
A program whose basic thesis is, not that the system of free enterprise for profit has failed in this generation, but that it has not been tried.--F.D. Roosevelt

Chapter II The Great Utopia
What has always made the state a hell on earth has been precisely that man has tried to make it his heaven--F. Hoelderlin

Chapter III Individualism and Collectivism
The socialists believe two things which are absolutely different and perhaps even contradictory: freedom and organization.--Elie Halvevy

Chapter IV The "Inevitability" of Planning
We were the first to assert that the more complicated the forms assumed by "civilization", the more restricted the freedom of the individual must become.--Benito Mussolini

Chapter V Planning and Democracy
The statesmen who should attempt to direct private people in what they ought to employ their capitals, would not only load himself with a most unnecessary attention, but assume an authority which could safely be trusted to no council and senate whatever, and which would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of a man who had folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit for the exercise--Adam Smith

Chapter VI Planning and the Rule of Law
Recent studies in the sociology of law once more confirm that the fundamental principle of formal law by which every case must be judged according to general rational principles, which have as few exceptions as possible, and are based on logical subsumptions, obtains only for the liberal competitive phase of capitalism.--Karl Mannheim

Chapter VII Economic Control and Totalitarianism
The control of the production of wealth is the control of human life itself.--Hillaire Belloc

Chapter VIII Who, Whom?
The finest opportunity ever given to the world was thrown away because the passion for equality made vain the hope for freedom.--Lord Acton

Chapter IX Security and Freedom
The whole of society will have become a single office and a single factory with the equality of work and equality of pay--Nikolai Lenin

In a country where the sole employer is the State, opposition means death by slow starvation. The old principle: who does not work shall not eat, has been replaced by a new one: who does not obey shall not eat.--Leon Trotsky

Chapter X Why the Worst Get on Top
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.--Lord Acton

Chapter XI The End of Truth
It is significant that the nationalization of thought has preceded everywhere the nationalization of industry.--E.H. Carr

Chapter XII The Socialist Roots of Nazism
All antiliberal forces are combining against all that is liberal.--A. Moeller Van Der Bruck

Chapter XIII The Totalitarians in Our Midst
When authority presents itself in hte guise of organization, it develops charms fascinating enough to convert communities of free people into totalitarian states.--"The Times" (London)

Chapter XIV Material Conditions and Ideal Ends
Is it just or reasonable, that voices against the main end of government should enslave the less number that would be free? More just is it, doubtless, if it come to force, that a less number compel a greater to retain, which can be no wrong to them, their liberty, than that a greater number, for the pleasure of their baseness, compel a less most injuriously to be their fellow slaves. They who seek nothing but their own just liberty, have always the right to win it, whenever they have the power, be the voices never so numerous that oppose it.--John Milton

Chapter XV The Prospects of International Order
Of all checks on democracy, federation has been the most efficacious and the most congenial...The federal system limits and restrains the sovereign power by dividing it and assigning to Government only certain defined rights. It is the only method of curbing not only the majority but the power of the whole people.--Lord Acton

If you do not own this book, buy it. If you have not read it, read it. If you have read it, read it again. The answer to the question asked by Hayek and Messrs. Brooks and Ryan, whether we shall have freedom or servitude, hangs on enough people being cognizant of both the question and the possible answers.

The Tragedy of State Compassion

 The Spirit of Compassion Yet to Come

The Dutch are a fascinating people in so many ways. The Belgians must be ashamed by constant comparisons. My recent article with The Washington Times, "Netherlands' Tragedy of State Compassion: socialism undermines more than government solvency,"argues against he common identification of "compassionate society" with "socialist society" or even just "extensive social services."

This is a true account from a friend of mine on Long Island, but I have changed the names to preserve people's privacy.

Even young Mick Jagger, bless his heart, could see that it's hard getting old.

But Mrs. van Breda, at 90, is managing just fine. This is not because her two daughters and their husbands live just a five-minute walk from her apartment, which they do. Neither is it because her four grandchildren - three of them in their 20s - also live nearby. They offer little help because they don't have to: The van Bredas live in the Netherlands, a caring society. For this reason, Mrs. van Breda's course of life is smoothed by a welfare state that has institutionalized compassion. Quality of life is about more than just what you get, however. Much of it has to do with the relationships involved in the giving, relationships that even a caring government cannot deliver and even can destroy.

When her husband, Gert, died 13 years ago, Mrs. van Breda sold their house and moved into a government-subsidized apartment. The government sends a woman once a week to clean her apartment, but because she has the woman for up to four hours, Mrs. van Breda also has her do the grocery shopping. She pays something toward the cost of this help, but her contribution is based on her income - a government-funded pension - and so the service is highly subsidized.

Her daughter, Johanna, could easily help her with these tasks. In fact, Mrs. van Breda asked Johanna, who also cleans houses, if she would like to help in place of the state worker. It's better that the money benefit her family, after all. But Johanna said no: Why bother helping her mother when the government will do it?

When she developed arthritis, the state sent around someone to change the handles on all her doors and the taps on her faucets. In a less "compassionate" society, measured very narrowly by how much the government does, her sons-in-law or grandsons would swing by and take care of that sort of thing. But there is no need, and so they do not - and they would not.

Ironically, but perhaps not surprisingly, the Netherlands' "compassionate" social policy, with its preference for state provision, has made individual Dutch people less compassionate. A 2006 international study of charitable giving found that the supposedly less compassionate Americans individually gave 1.67 percent of the country's gross domestic product to charity. The Dutch gave just 0.45 percent, and the more moderate Canadians and British gave 0.72 percent and 0.73 percent respectively. Mrs. van Breda's expatriate son, Pieter, who lives in New York, notes that people have become personally unmindful of the needy as a result of these social-welfare policies. Personal relations are colder, he says, more businesslike, even within families.

The Dutch government serves Johanna's mother because it serves everyone, securing a minimal standard of living for all to enjoy. Through an array of birth-to-death social services that are either free of charge or subsidized according one's income, the state redistributes income widely. There is no reason for anyone in the Netherlands to be without a suitable home, to cut short his or her education anytime before senility or even to give any thought to feeding and clothing one's children. The Dutch have decided that a good society is a compassionate society, and so people should provide for one another's dignity and basic quality of life ... but only through the state. People needn't actually have anything to do with one another directly.

The Dutch state is said to be quite efficient in its delivery of services, and the Dutch people are happy with it. To be sure, neither Mrs. van Breda nor any of her children has any complaints. But this system comes at a human cost that its boosters must consider. My friend Pieter tells me that when it comes to serving the needy, regardless of the family relationship, the modern Dutch consider it enough that they pay taxes. In fact, they have come to bear a striking resemblance to none other than Ebenezer Scrooge in Dickens' "A Christmas Carol." Approached by two men who came collecting for the poor, he rebuffed them, asking, "Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?" Granted, Dutch provisions for those in need are on a level of humanity far higher than those Mr. Scrooge was satisfied with funding. But the spirit of personal indifference is the same. People simply don't want to be bothered, says Pieter - not even for their parents.

Daniel Henninger wrote recently in the Wall Street Journal, "One of the constant criticisms of Barack Obama's first year is that he's making us 'more like Europe.'" Those on the American political left are eagerly working to make us precisely that. They see our individualism as selfish and immoral, and they view our reliance on private charity as ineffective and degrading in comparison to government services and entitlements. The lesson of the Dutch experience, however, is not that the welfare state is the defining feature of a compassionate society, but that our choice in providing for those who are helpless and suffering is between the nanny state and a caring citizenry.

Henninger's article is "The We're-Not-Like-Europe Party," May 13, 2010.

A friend of recent Dutch descent shared this comment:

I am saddened by what has happened to the country of my father and grandfather.  We used to take pride in how industrious we were. The reason "Dutch cleanser" was called Dutch cleanser was that we Dutch people were ridiculously great housekeepers--they were clean freaks--scrubbing our stoops (yes, that is a Dutch name too) till they shined. I visited there a few years ago and hardly recognized it with all the filth. The government does not care about "clean"...and neither do the Dutch anymore.

I am sorry to hear about the filth. I have only heard about moral filth. I strongly suspect that it is closely related to the decline in personal responsibility. They have conquered the sea, but succumbed to the tide of nihilism. They are a tragedy, and in that is both a great compliment and an equally great lament. The North American Dutch have slouched in a different way toward their own Gomorrah. But there is still virtue in some of their communities here.

Pelosi's America and the Promise of Harmony

I have noriced that everyone is better looking when they smile. A smile beautifies any face. But Nancy Pelosi appears to be an exception. Her smile is frightening, and she is smiling a lot these days. The reason for it is far more frightening. She is gleeful because her plans for a New America are being realized.

Think of it this way...



Consider other Narfbuscuit insights.

P.S. Well-earned smugness for anyone who got the allusion to Samuel Huntington.

Dr. Obama Does Economic Heart Surgery

In his speech yesterday at Federal Hall in New York's financial district, President Obama, speaking on the financial crisis, proposed what he called "the most ambitious overhaul of the financial regulatory system since the Great Depression." But if Wall Street is to the economy what the heart is to the body, this legislation is like open heart surgery. It is no work for mechanics or butchers, nor for herbalists and conjurers. Yet, he openly boasts that he is entrusting this task to the most anti-capitalist, anti-business, socialism-first-and-prosperity-second Congressional leadership this country has ever seen. It is for good reason that they are universally distrusted outside the hard-line, ideological left.

Here President Obama in his introductions before the speech draws special attention to one Congressman in the audience: "he is going to be helping to shape the agenda going forward to make sure that we have one of the strongest, most dynamic, and most innovative financial markets in the world for many years to come--and that's my good friend, Barney Frank."



If "Barney Frank" is how the President summarizes what he means by "strong, dynamic, and innovative financial markets," then we need an interpretive key like this for understanding his speeches: "War is peace; freedom is slavery; ignorance is strength." Think of Democratic "health care" reform in that context.

Sen. Jim DeMint spoke at The King's College yesterday saying some of the things he says here regarding the socialistic direction of the administration's reforms. Watch his FoxNews interview here.

His book is Saving Freedom We Can Stop America's Slide Into Socialism.

Things to Keep in Mind

John Stossel, long employed in yeoman's work on behalf of the republic, brings his acute eye to the government-run health care about to be pressed down on us by our betters. You and everyone you know should hear this piece in order to accurately assess the President's last ditch attempt to keep the wheels on his rolling disaster. Only a massive push back is going to prevent the Canada-ization of our medical industry.




And just for fun, here Stossel confronts the useless idiot Michael Moore on his claims of Cuban superiority in health care. What a crock.

ObamaCare Means Lay Down Your Life

In the competing views of health care reform, we see the fruit of different political philosophies and different moral universes. When considering the public good, Democrats think more socially whereas Republicans are more individualistic in their approach to the question. In modern times, the social trump leads in the direction of totalitarianism, an all powerful state overseeing and directing all things for what it judges to be the good of the people (or so they say). Individual sovereignty leads increasingly to a destruction of moral community. In other words, they lead to Castro's Cuba and Capra's Potterville, respectively. The Founders of our republic envisioned neither one.

Betsy McCaughey, in "Obama's Health Rationer-in-Chief," shows how the social trump that neglects the importance of individual self-government and the inherent worth of every human being works its way out in the Obama administration's approach to managing scarce health care dollars from Washington instead of at the point of consumption.

It is horrifying, but at the same time revealing, that a man with this moral orientation would have such a prominent role in the formulation of our government's health care policy.

Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, health adviser to President Barack Obama, is under scrutiny. As a bioethicist, he has written extensively about who should get medical care, who should decide, and whose life is worth saving. Dr. Emanuel is part of a school of thought that redefines a physician’s duty, insisting that it includes working for the greater good of society instead of focusing only on a patient’s needs. Many physicians find that view dangerous, and most Americans are likely to agree.

The health bills being pushed through Congress put important decisions in the hands of presidential appointees like Dr. Emanuel. They will decide what insurance plans cover, how much leeway your doctor will have, and what seniors get under Medicare. Dr. Emanuel, brother of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, has already been appointed to two key positions: health-policy adviser at the Office of Management and Budget and a member of the Federal Council on Comparative Effectiveness Research. He clearly will play a role guiding the White House's health initiative.

ObamaCare gives new meaning to the call to lay down your life for your country. It gives a perverse twist to Kennedy's noble call at the end of his 1961 inaugural address: "ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country."

Of course, I would like to re-produce the entire article, but I can only encourage you to read the whole thing in the Wall Street Journal.

Like Lunch, There is No Free Health Care

The Democrats are puzzled as to why Americans aren’t flocking to grab a piece of the “free health care” that their generous and compassionate party is trying to arrange for us. Paul Krugman attributes this insanity to the “zombie” ideas of the Reagan years which, though dead, continue to live among us ("All the President's Zombies" NYT, Aug. 23, 2009).

But Guy Sorman explains in this short City Journal essay ("Paying for Le Treatment," Aug. 24, 2009) that, as it is with lunch, there is NO FREE HEALTH CARE. He uses the recently celebrated French system as an example.

In a New York Times Magazine essay ("Le Treatment"), Sara Paretsky, a novelist travelling in France with her husband (ah, the privileges of wealth) explained how impressed she was by the quality and speed of the care that her husband received when he went to the hospital with chest pains. This care would have been free if they had been French citizens. Instead, the system billed them, but for only $220. She recommends this paradise which can be ours if we would just follow the President into the happyland of hope and change that he promised us and is now trying to deliver.

Wealthy liberals believe this sort of fantasy because they are used to having things just handed to them. They turn on the tap of life, and out flows whatever abundance they desire. They put bad things at the foot of their driveway, and the next day it has magically disappeared. Surely the government--especially the Obama government--can institute a national health care system than mandates low prices from wicked price gougers and top quality care from health care professionals who, as government employees, will become public spirited instead of narrowly selfish in their service to patients.

What a wonderful world. But it exists only in the dreams and delusions of political liberals. The rest of us look at the post office and the IRS, and dread the thought of our health care in the hands of the similarly callous and inefficient.

Sorman ends his brief lesson in the economics of "free" government goodies with this warning:

"In the end, who paid for Paretsky’s husband’s nearly free ride in a French hospital? French workers and taxpayers; American patients; and the young, unqualified, and out-of-work French unable to find jobs because of the unemployment that national health insurance engenders. There is no such thing, anywhere, as a perfect health-insurance system. It’s always a trade-off among competing goods, and the choices to be made are ultimately political ones. Americans commenting on health-care reform should try to make the costs and consequences of these choices transparent, rather than resorting to misleading morality plays."

GM Mission Creep

The Obama people are having a hard time coming up with a way to pay for their universal government health care program. But now that they own General Motors, it may cross the minds of more than a few that this corporation might be useful for paying for the health plan.

The problem is that government (and unions, also big stakeholders now) are incapable of running an industry, i.e. making good products that people want, providing good customer service, and, in all of this, making a profit. So to the extent that government is involved in GM, the car maker won't be turning a profit and funding anything.

But government will certainly get involved in actually running GM. It will prove too tempting not to. That means that business concerns will be subordinated to political concerns. Just yesterday I saw a Senate committee excoriating GM executives for shutting down dealerships and the manner in which they did it. What these politicians were thinking was obvious. We own this company now, so we'll use it to keep people in their jobs. That is, they'll use it as a welfare system, not a business. Think of the way factories functioned in the old Soviet Union.

We are also seeing gleeful Democratic pols pushing to shut down the production of moneymaking SUVs (vehicles that liberals see as evil planet-destroying machines in general, but useful and cool when they own them themselves because, well, a few don't make that much difference) and expand the production of fuel efficient "green" cars that nobody wants but that everyone should want.

But really what difference do markets and profit make? If government should run the health care industry because everyone needs health care that is affordable and accessible regardless of ability to pay, then surely the same is true of cars. Think of it this way. Everyone needs a job, and cars are necessary for most people to get to their jobs. Government can now help put people in cars regardless of their ability to pay. Furthermore, for the sake of our health and for "the survival of the planet," we all need to be driving the right cars. Given what's out there, clearly the market is not able to direct either producers or consumers to socially and environmentally responsible cars. But the government can help there too.

Government ownership and management of, and political fiddling with, the auto industry may provide Americans a valuable lesson in what the government can and cannot do well, regardless of what in principle is should be doing. Or those lessons may come too late. On the other hand, the GM deal may prove to be a great leap for the government even more deeply into providing for everyone's "basic human goods," such as health care, cars, houses, schooling (with hot breakfast and lunch), retirement, and perhaps even tucking you in at night.

Consider the disastrous British experience with government ownership of the auto industry, especially when militant unions are involved. Follow this series of videos.

And here again for the fun of it is the Congressional Motors ad you've seen before:

I saw another mock ad for a new American car that reads this way: "You wouldn't buy our lousy cars. So now we're taking your money anyway. The Bailout. Coming in January."

Harold adds:
Our friend Iowahawk found this ad:



David responds:

The thing about these spoofs is that you can never be too ridiculous when anticipating secret liberal ambitions. Remember when charges of "Homosexual marriage will be next" was thought to be an hysterical scare tactic? Now they treat you like an Ayatollah if you question it in any way. The stakes could not be higher for these people. They're out to "save the planet." Why should we not expect them to impose wartime rationing like use of the car only on odd numbered Saturdays?

Just Wondering

I stated in my usual flippant way about a year ago that if Obama were elected I would consider it a sign of God’s judgment getting seriously underway. Yet I was more than half serious. The Bible is emphatic in saying He will not always strive with man—there is an end to the pathetic metaphysical rebellion of creatures who would overthrow their creator, and all the forms that rebellion takes. I don’t consider the United States or any political entity the new Israel, nor do I think we are his “chosen people” in any covenantal sense, though we certainly are blessed in many ways. Yet I’ve wondered at the timeframe of this Christian and now post-Christian era, as it stretches into two millennia since His ascension and promise to return. Every generation, beginning with the evangelists and apostles who themselves walked the earth with Christ, were looking for the end of days in their lifetimes, since the signs of the end of the age He gave have been plausibly ascribed to every previous generation. Certain it is that some generation will be the one which sees His coming—but all believers at all times were given to understand that it could be any day. The world has seen horrendous moral evil, social and cultural upheavals, economic and political catastrophes, disease and natural disasters that in many ways exceed anything we who are now living have seen. Frightening events have characterized every era, and believers have lived their lives fearing on the one hand the awful judgment preceding His return, and on the other looking forward to their vindication and His, when the Author and finisher of their faith puts paid to the works of evil in this world.

There are reasons to think we are declining into the days foretold of old, reasons no previous generation had—though we can see the whole of history, Anno Domine, as pitching toward the inevitable end.

The first is the nuclear technology slowly seeping out into the barbarian world for a decade or two —the second time will not be flood but fire, recall; the agents of proliferation have been busy putting it by the august and wise councils of the transnationalists in charge of ruling the world, and it is very near the time when an insane dictator or group of apocalyptic mullahs pulls the trigger and unwittingly fulfills the will of God in bringing to a fiery end wide swaths of humanity. It cannot escape notice that Israel is ground zero in most of these apocalyptic nightmare scenarios.

The second is the abandonment of Israel by the only nation who ever really acted as an ally—America. The Obama administration appears to be setting the predicate for a European approach to relations with Israel-i.e., throwing them to the wolves. Across Europe, throughout the U.N., and increasingly in the upper echelons of elite American institutions, anti-Semitism is once again in vogue, a sickening undercurrent becoming more brazen and open by the day. Another run at a “final solution” seems on tap for the very near future, if the Iranian mullahs have their way. I suspect many Europeans of the WWII era remained unrepentant of their feelings against Jews, even after the atrocities of the Nazis came to light. The hard hearts of today's hard Left would shed few tears over a nuked Israel—they brought it on themselves, after all, and aren’t we all better off without the Zionist entity?.

The third is the great turning away—“the hearts of most will grow cold”. The “post Christian” era finds the rise of a militant and evangelical atheism, along with an official and determined persecution of Christians unprecedented under a constitution that expressly prohibits it. The widespread and general rejection of God by those people who knew the Gospel is one of the signs of the end, and even though there have been many such periods before, this seems a much more knowing and final rejection, given the presumption of knowledge modernity and science have thrown down, and given the self referential and narcissistic self absorption of postmodern types .

A great flourishing epoch of vast wealth is crashing into a worldwide depression, providing the antecedent crisis conditions for that ultimate demagogue foreseen in John’s Revelation, the anti-Christ himself. Is this the turn of the wheel that sees the Man of Perdition walk onstage? Only time will tell; many another era has had the look and smell of the final judgment. But did you ever notice how the sand at the end of an hour glass seems to run so much faster? The sand seems like it’s running faster to me…so many exigencies at once, so many abrupt cultural and constitutional changes forced on us by the One…

Some changes come so very slowly—over decades and centuries of years—but some come rushing past so fast people are left with their hands in their pockets as everything is swept before them. Did you ever really think you would live in a socialist America, with a ruined economy, moral anarchy in the form of gay “marriage”, abortion and even infanticide officially supported, our sovereignty handed over to transnational organizations? The deliberate crushing of individual freedom, and the fomenting of crisis conditions to augment the taking? Maybe the twenty-first century A.D. is the last. Twenty one is enough I think.

****************
Innes adds:
Take heart, brother. Try to see the whole thing in a broader covenantal perspective. Think of the Solomon's reign. It seemed to be the Kingdom of God itself. And in an anticipatory way, it way. Then it all came crashing down. The kingdom divided. Idolatry was everywhere. Eventually, Jerusalem was overrun by the ungodly and the Temple was desecrated and even toppled. he world had come to an end. But God's plans were bigger and more gloriosu than anything they could imagine.

In 476 AD, Rome was sacked. We often think of Rome as having an adversarial relationship with Christianity, but not only was the world shocked by this fall, Christians saw the end of all things in it. Jerome wept in his cave at Bethlehem where he was writing his commentary on Ezekiel when he received the news. He did not rejoice over the fall of what could surely be called a city of great sin. Rather he wrote, “Who could have believed that Rome, founded on triumphs over the world, could fall to ruin; and that she, the mother of nations, should also be their grave?” And again, “The world is rushing to ruin. The glorious city, the capital of the Roman Empire, has been swallowed up in one conflagration.” And indeed centuries of civilizational darkness followed, but then a great flourishing of the gospel and of civilization. The Puritans took the opposite view of their age. They thought that things were going so well that the millenial rule of Christ prior to his return must be at hand. (Many were post-mil). It seems they were wrong. The end of liberty as we have known it in America is not necessarily the end of the world, much as it breaks my heart to see great chunks of it fall off into the advancing sea of the nanny state.

Eschatology is a tricky subject to square with current events, though I respect your long paragraph of qualification. Even when our exegesis and theology are spot on, we're just too caught up emotionally with out times to judge them soberly one way or another.

A book on the eschatology of the early church that came recommended to me today is Dale C. Allison, Jr., The End of the Ages Has Come: An Early Interpretation of the Passion and Resurrection of Jesus (Fortress Presss, 1985).

The Socialist Global Moment

Hobbes's Leviathan

With economies collapsing worldwide (or seeming to), people are panicking. They are pointing to capitalism--the system of economic liberty that supports the system of political liberty--as the culprit. The New York Times recently reported, in connection with this week's G-20 gathering in London, "The American banking collapse, which precipitated the global meltdown, has led to a fundamental rethinking of the American way as a model for the rest of the world." Freedom means personal vulnerability, mutual destruction, and widespread misery, or so they say. When the cost of freedom outweighs the benefits, people willingly exchange their freedom for relative safety under the protection of a strongman of some sort, whether it is a warlord, a pimp, or the progressive state.

Seventeenth century philosopher Thomas Hobbes argued that human beings are by nature radically individual and free to order their actions however they choose. We are thus not naturally political, but naturally free and fundamentally selfish. Alas, in what he called a "state of nature" in which everyone is simply free, unrestrained by any government or civil society of any sort, life is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short." Freedom being an intolerable condition, people flee it for the security of life together under a political sovereign.

This same logic was the leftist gospel in the 1980s. The claim on the left was that the nuclear standoff between NATO and the Soviet Bloc, threatening as it did the destruction of "the planet," made one world government the only rational option. It is better to be red (communist) than dead. But the logic of achieving security through the threat of mutually assured destruction was founded on better premises, and thankfully prevailed in the minds of most free citizens. Nation states survived, as did political and economic liberty, and the world socialist movement seemed to slip irrecoverably into the history of foolish ideas.

Once again, however, we are being tempted to flee into the arms of Leviathan, and The Wall Street Journal has given the president of the Party of European Socialists and former Danish prime minister, Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, space on their opinion page to make his case for "The Socialist Solution to the Crisis" (April 2, 2009), namely, global socialist government.

He begins his manifesto with this "blood of the oppressed drips from your fingers" declaration: "The job losses, repossessions, uncertainty, fear and misery faced by the people of Europe, the United States and Japan are a terrible stain on the consciences of those bankers and politicians whose doctrine of neo-liberal markets plunged us all into this crash." For the poor in the developing nations (which, interestingly, he still calls "the Third World"), this has meant "hunger, disease, and death." His socialist analysis calls forth a socialist solution. He sees this crisis as "a unique opportunity to develop a new approach," viz. "a Global New Deal."

His most troubling expression of glee comes when he describes the Global Progressive Forum (GPF) which will meet soon meet in Brussels.

This is the world conference of the Global Progressive Forum (GPF), which will bring together speakers from five continents to develop a new vision of a globalized world which benefits all. The GPF will take place in the European Parliament and will be opened by Bill Clinton. It will feature debates and discussions on the issues of global governance, trade, financial markets, decent work, migration and climate change, all aimed at coordinating global answers to what are global crises. It shows that the world's progressives are serious about making a solidaristic social model a reality for all.

Sadly, we have no Reagan at the helm to fight against this latest totalitarian thrust against the dignity of liberty. But the defense of liberty always depends on the education for liberty among free citizens. Thankfully, at least for now, we still have the freedom to discuss these ideas.

Beware of Governments Handing Out Security Blankets

We are wearied already with comparisons of the One with FDR, with our New New Deal, and this being the worst emergency since the Great Depression, which FDR presided over and rode for a decade, yet again the parallel thrusts itself before us. FDR introduced us to his "Four Freedoms", which he put forward as government's obligation to provide. (Freedom of speech and religion, and freedom from want and fear.) It seems Obama wants to revise and extend the list. Matt Drudge has this banner headline up:

GOVERNMENT WEBSITE TO WARN OF SADNESS/CRYING OVER ECONOMY

It appears that now the government is in the business of providing freedom from sadness and crying as well..

"The feds will warn of depression, suicidal thinking and other serious mental illnesses. It will raise warning flags for: Persistent sadness/crying; Excessive anxiety; Lack of sleep/constant fatigue; Excessive irritability/anger."

Or, perhaps as we navigate our way through the Orwellian ObamaSpeak we are forced to decode each day, this might be a warning along the lines of the Tom Hanks character in the movie "A League of Their Own": There's no crying in socialism!

Perhaps it's a psychological ploy to create even more desperation through the power of suggestion: "you're looking awfully worried today--is everything alright?"

Either way, Americans are being fitted out with training wheels, rubber bumpers on all sharp corners, life lessons, bedtime stories, and soothing comfort for all their boo-boos by their warm and always hovering nanny government. Wouldn't it be nice to just settle back and let the government take the weight of the world off your shoulders? How about a nice peanut butter sandwich and a glass of juice, while we take over your pension plan, your medical care, your education, your energy use, your workplace, your mortgage, your standard of living, the products you buy,...

Capitalism and Its Fruits

There are times when I am at home when I am too tired to do all the stuff I should be doing, and so like many another American, I repair to the cheap passivity of slouching in the leather chair in front of the flat screen TV that lurks like some kind of pagan altar in my home. But even at my most mind-numbed, the tube still resembles the business end of a 103 channel sewer pipe, pumping cultural detritus into living rooms across the land. Yet one program that I came across while flipping through the channels is a program called "How It's Made" on the Science Channel, a part of the Discover Network, and it allows me to loaf without self-inflicting too much psychic damage. Short segments show the basic processes involved in thousands of the products and devices that our huge, flourishing, modern economy has, Adam Smith-like, made available to households and businesses all over the world.

I have always been fascinated and impressed by the genius and creativity of manufacturing engineers, and the coordination of inputs and outputs by the free market that make possible the cornflakes and tennis shoes of life. Adam Smith's paean to the lead pencil comes to mind, following Locke's similar analysis in chapter Five of his Second Treatise of Government. Which government commissar, looking down from the commanding heights, could coordinate the millions of decisions made every day by free entrepreneurs and managers across this economy?

Among the many items showcased by the program are Binoculars, Sparklers, Rubber Boots, Circular Saw Blades, Anatomical Models, Jukeboxes, Tortilla Chips, Spark Plugs, Pencils, Coffee, Javelins, Cuckoo Clocks, Hearts of Palm, Windshield Wipers, Technical Glass, Washing Machines, Playing Cards, Crossbows, Cine Cameras, Glass Christmas Ornaments, Giant Tires, Microphones, Hot Tubs, Artificial Turf, and Beer Steins.

What do all these products and the industrial processes that make them possible have in common? CAPITAL. When you watch this program you are struck with the scale of the undertaking, and the discrepancy between the size of the production machinery compared to the product being manufactured. Even the least consequential product--the pencil, say--requires a huge industrial array of production facilities and processes to deliver that product into your hands as a consumer. It is the freedom we enjoy under the rule of law, and a constitution that specifically favors commercial activity, that allows the capital formation that makes possible even the simplest items we depend on and take for granted. How much would a handmade pencil cost? $5? $10? Instead, pencils are so cheap you hardly bend over to pick one up that has fallen. The vast array of manufactured items that make your life possible at a price that you hardly even notice is brought to you by CAPITALISM. The private interest of free men, free to make a profit, brings to your door every item in your house, including your house, at a price point that you can afford. Can't afford a $120 trash can for the kitchen? You can buy one for $10.

Take a look at this program sometime, and consider how much of our industrial manufacturing would have been possible under a less free political economy--say, like the one we are steering into now, where grandstanding Congressmen compete with faceless bureaucrats to antagonize with regulation as many aspects of the economy as they can get to.

I grew up hearing about "American ingenuity", about the can-do spirit that made America not only the envy of the world, but its economic engine. We are witnessing the systematic destruction, by way of the tax code, of the system of capital formation that makes it a rational economic decision to build a huge factory full of machine tools and production lines for the manufacture of even the humblest of products that we rely on every day. Without the growth that freedom allows, we will from this day forward begin to live off the capital already in place in the form of plant and equipment, and whatever new enterprises that might seem possible under this new regime will groan under a much heavier burden of taxation and regulation, and now it seems, even open intervention by the Congress in things like executive pay and union affiliation. Obama keeps saying he is laying the groundwork for future economic growth by loading us up with the gargantuan spending he and Pelosi are planning, but they are making the mistake all collectivists make concerning the producers. They assume that regulation and taxation have no essential effect on the level of production. But the increased rate of taxation being contemplated will remove the economic rationale for a huge number of projects on the books right now. There are untold thousands of projects, plans, and dreams that are back on the shelf now under the aspect of the mere threat of increased taxation.

If the Democrats have their way--and it looks like they will--our flourishing economy will begin to decay into the sort of rusting hulks seen all over the collectivist world. It needn't be.

UPDATE:

After reflecting on the blessings conferred by free markets and free minds, consider the "Anti Industrial Coup" being pulled off under our noses by faceless and remorseless bureaucratic fanatics across the spectrum of executive branch agencies. Today, (Mar 26) Robert Tracinski warns that it may already be too late to save our industrial civilization from these radicals.

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.

America Is Mutable and Mortal

Contrary to Harold Kildow's concerns in the previous post (citing Charles Murray), David Brooks argues that "the United States will never be Europe. It was born as a commercial republic. It’s addicted to the pace of commercial enterprise. After periodic pauses, the country inevitably returns to its elemental nature" ("The Commercial Republic," New York Times, March 16, 2009).

There is a sense in which this is true. But there is a more alarming sense in which that commercial spirit is being ever more heavily burdened by government hyperactivity and that the manly spirit of American self-reliance is being ever more seduced into infantile dependence on the state. We have never recovered from Roosevelt's power grab in response to the Great Depression of the 1930s. Brooks passes over this fact.

"We are now in an astonishingly noncommercial moment. Risk is out of favor. The financial world is abashed. Enterprise is suspended....Washington is temporarily at the center of the nation’s economic gravity and a noncommercial administration holds sway...But if there is one thing we can be sure of, this pause will not last. The cultural DNA of the past 400 years will not be erased. The pendulum will swing hard. The gospel of success will recapture the imagination."

But Brooks underestimates the profundity of this President's radical antipathy to the American political culture that sustains that commercial spirit. Furthermore, in referring to our "cultural DNA" and "elemental nature," he underestimates the conventionality and thus fragility of our commercial and entrepreneurial spirit. It's an expression of character, not nature. Whereas nature is immutable, character is corruptible. For that reason, civilizations are mortal, and every regime must give thoughtful attention to the principles of decay inherent in it, and thus what is necessary for its perpetuation. (On the rise and fall of different regimes, or forms of government and their political cultures, read Book VIII of Plato's Republic.) This is the problem to which Alexis de Tocqueville and Abraham Lincoln turned their profoundly insightful attention.

Quin Hillyer at The American Spectator is not as sanguine. Read "Destroying the Country To Save It" below.

In Harold's post, "We're All Europeans Now," he quotes Dick Morris as foreseeing Obama's New America being "a socialist democracy in which the government dominates the economy, determines private-sector priorities and offers a vastly expanded range of services to many more people at much higher taxes. Obama will accomplish his agenda of 'reform' under the rubric of 'recovery.'"

George Newman in the Wall Street Journal shows us where we are heading as Obama shifts the country's organizing principle more squarely on what he calls "fairness," "economic justice," "redistribution of wealth," and "empathy." I lay it out in "Obama's Coming Economic Justice." It is pillage as public policy, and it leads beyond Europe to the kleptocracy that is Africa, but democratized. Now there's a model!

Consider how entrenched all these changes will become once Obama shifts the entire tax burden to a minority of the voting population, brings millions of illegal immigrants onto the voter rolls, empowers ACORN to universalize voter fraud, and fiddles the census so that left wing majorities become mathematically inevitable for generations to come. Think of the Massachusetts Congressional delegation writ large. Under such circumstances (watch them unfold), removing these overlords from power would take a critical mass of economic, political, and social crises so severe that it is horrifying to contemplate it.

Let me echo Quin Hillyer: "Rhetorically, organizationally, financially, and politically, [Barack Obama] must be stopped. Must."

Why We Must Not Let America Become France

In a piece titled "The Europe Syndrome and the Challenge to American Exceptionalism" (The American, March 16, 2009), Charles Murray gives chapter and verse supporting the "socialism is a soul killing threat to humanity" meme that David and I have been promoting here every chance we get. (See below). Of course, being Charles Murray the eminent social scientist, he goes much further than that commonplace observation and extrapolates it into the call for a new Great Awakening; not a spiritual awakening (though he would not be against such a thing), so much as a cultural and political awakening. It is a call for Americans to realize what we have, and why we have it.

The advent of the Obama administration brings this question before the nation: Do we want the United States to be like Europe? President Obama and his leading intellectual heroes are the American equivalent of Europe’s social democrats. There’s nothing sinister about that. They share an intellectually respectable view that Europe’s regulatory and social welfare systems are more progressive than America’s and advocate reforms that would make the American system more like the European system.

Not only are social democrats intellectually respectable, the European model has worked in many ways. I am delighted when I get a chance to go to Stockholm or Amsterdam, not to mention Rome or Paris. When I get there, the people don’t seem to be groaning under the yoke of an evil system. Quite the contrary. There’s a lot to like—a lot to love—about day-to-day life in Europe.

But the European model can’t continue to work much longer. Europe’s catastrophically low birth rates and soaring immigration from cultures with alien values will see to that.

So let me rephrase the question. If we could avoid Europe’s demographic problems, do we want the United States to be like Europe?

I argue for the answer “no,” but not for economic reasons. The European model has indeed created sclerotic economies and it would be a bad idea to imitate them. But I want to focus on another problem.

My argument is drawn from Federalist Paper No. 62, probably written by James Madison: “A good government implies two things: first, fidelity to the object of government, which is the happiness of the people; secondly, a knowledge of the means by which that object can be best attained.” Note the word: happiness. Not prosperity. Not security. Not equality. Happiness, which the Founders used in its Aristotelian sense of lasting and justified satisfaction with life as a whole.

I have two points to make. First, I will argue that the European model is fundamentally flawed because, despite its material successes, it is not suited to the way that human beings flourish—it does not conduce to Aristotelian happiness. Second, I will argue that 21st-century science will prove me right.

The rest is must reading for all of you here at this blog. You can finish it here.

Charles Murray is the W. H. Brady Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. This essay is adapted from The 2009 Irving Kristol Lecture delivered in Washington, D.C. on March 11, 2009. The American is a magazine of ideas published by the American Enterprise Institute.

The Third Book of Obama

Turn with me now sisters and brothers to the Third Book of the Prophet Obama, where we find the text of today's message. Our savior's other two books have given hope to millions, hope indeed for the overturning of the impious and cruel economic regime of those rascally republicans, the world of white hegemony where the "white man's greed rules a world in need" according to the forerunner Jeremiah, who as we have seen, was not worthy to untie the shoes of the One who came after.

Now in the latest revelation, Obama--may he always be praised--spells out explicitly what his tormentor, Joe the Plumber, tried to drag out of him prematurely with that disrespectful interjection about socialism--may he languish eternally over at Pajamas TV! His kingdom was not yet come, so premature speech about what the One would reveal, in the fullness of time, shows even the demonic republican plumbers know him, and are afraid!

From "A New Era of Responsibility: Renewing America's Promise. The President's Budget and Fiscal Preview", or the Third Book Of Obama, we see that not economic growth and vitality, but fairness, is what America needs most. And it is not fair that some should have more than others, in particular, the top 1 per cent. Though these one percenters create most of the wealth, they are keeping too much of it for themselves. This too shall cease, sayeth the Lord Obama:

While middle-class families have been playing by the rules, living up to their responsibilities as neighbors and citizens, those at the commanding heights of our economy have not."
"Prudent investments in education, clean energy, health care and infrastructure were sacrificed for huge tax cuts for the wealthy and well-connected."
"There's nothing wrong with making money, but there is something wrong when we allow the playing field to be tilted so far in the favor of so few. . . . It's a legacy of irresponsibility, and it is our duty to change it."

As some other prophet or other once said, first shall be last and last shall be first. The Lord Obama means to bring heaven to earth by overturning the rule of the rich, taking from the lions and giving to the lambs. Already the undeserving rich around the world have given up 22 trillion in wealth, according to the plan for fairness now underway. And it's only beginning dear ones--TARP II and Son of Stimulus are coming soon. The dawn of fairness and equality is breaking, and soon we shall all be living in the light of the Lightworker!

Let us give thanks dear children, while we await our cut of the spoils. That 13 dollars a week will sure feel good--that, and seeing how the mighty 1 percent are fallen!

(H/T to Dan Henninger at the WSJ)

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.

The Mask Is Off

Larry Kudlow, who has educated me in the ways of economic science starting back in the early 80's, had on his TV show one Donald Luskin, another of the truly good guys and straight shooters on the scene today. Unsurprisingly, he weighed in with an impassioned, off the cuff riff not unlike many posts by David and me in this space over the last 18 months. Listen to the entire segment of Kudlow's CNBC show to hear Luskin's dead-on take on the Bamster. The kernal of what he said, picked up in res media:

"None of the things that are happening now should have been a surprise. The things that Obama is doing, his war on capitalism, his unholy partnership with Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi in the war on capitalism are exactly all the things he promised in his campaign. There is no bait and switch, no surprise--look, you and I are optimists, we tried to think he was a centrist because he appointed someone like Larry Summers instead of someone like Robert Riech, but you know, the mask is off. He is trying to socialize this country, with socialized health care, with carbon taxes, with raising taxes on hedge funds and private equity funds and even ordinary investors. He wants to wipe out your 401K so you will be dependent on the federal government for your health care and your retirement, and until that runaway train, that legislative onslaught, that is being made possible in the name of emergency, until that train is halted, stocks cannot sustain any meaningful rally."

Some of you--and you know who you are--have been thinking David and I have been too harsh on the One, rushing to judgment as it were. But we were on to Barack the hard leftist in moderate/pragmatic/centrist clothing from the beginning. We are now witnessing the full court press by the hard left in finalizing their 70 year old dream of politicizing all of American life, controlling you in every discernible aspect of your life.

Sort of like the 1980's TV show "V", in which alien invaders masquerade as humans in order to take over the world.

The Measure of Our National Distress

In this video clip, Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) admits that we may have to nationalize the banks, and my own Congressman, Pete King (R-NY), is open to the idea. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), who is as far off in left field as anyone in Congress, says with great satisfaction, "We've come a long way!" Yes, Congresswoman, but it's not progress. It's plummeting.



Actually, when Pete King is seriously entertaining the notion of nationalizing banks, it makes me wonder what they know that I don't know.

The Economist is also talking along those lines.

Here is an excerpt from this week's cover story, "The Obama Rescue," which it calls "a huge wasted opportunity in the economic crisis."

America cannot rescue the world economy alone. But this double offensive [the stimulus bill and Geithner's proposed fix for the financial system] by its biggest economy could potentially have broken the spiral of uncertainty and gloom that is gripping investors, producers and consumers across the globe.
Alas, that opportunity was squandered. Mr Obama ceded control of the stimulus to the fractious congressional Democrats, allowing a plan that should have had broad support from both parties to become a divisive partisan battle. More serious still was Mr Geithner’s financial-rescue blueprint which, though touted as a bold departure from the incrementalism and uncertainty that had plagued the Bush administration’s Wall Street fixes, in fact looked depressingly like his predecessors’ efforts: timid, incomplete and short on detail. Despite talk of trillion-dollar sums, stockmarkets tumbled. Far from boosting confidence, Mr Obama seems at sea.

They explain that a fiscal stimulus without fixing the financial system cannot bring lasting economic recovery. But the bad news is: "The scale of troubled loans and the estimates of likely losses—which are now routinely put at over $2 trillion—suggest many of the country’s biggest banks may be insolvent."
The Economist proposes "some form of 'bad bank' for toxic loans (with temporary nationalisation part of that cleansing process, if necessary) and guarantees to cover catastrophic losses in the “good” banks that remain." Of course, nothing is temporary in a Democrat power grab. The scary thing is, sadly, there may be no choice.
Feb. 24, 2009 update: In today's Wall Street Journal ("Bank Nationalization Isn't the Answer"), William Isaac, chairman of the FDIC from 1981-1985, says, "People who should know better have been speculating publicly that the government might need to nationalize our largest banks. This irresponsible chatter is causing tremendous turmoil in financial markets. The Obama administration needs to make clear immediately that nationalization -- government seizing control of ownership and operations of a company -- is not a viable option."

Good Morning Comrades!

Glen Beck wonders "why not go all the way?"




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Innes adds: When you take government money, you have to submit to government regulation. So now we see the government telling companies how much they can pay their executives, whether they should have private jets or even fly first class (or even fly at all!), where they can have their executive retreats (it's Wisconsin Dells this year, boys; enjoy the waterslide), and how much they can pay for a toilet stool. Yet businesses and industries are lining up to get in on this "free money."


George Bailey, in It's a Wonderful Life, learned to resist the allure such an offer of help. Like Mr Potter's seemingly kind offer to help the Savings and Loan survive their liquidity crisis, it's not a bailout, but a buyout. And he who pays the piper calls the tune.

But what's our problem with this? Who are we to question the Dear Leader? The government runs everything so cost efficiently and with such people-friendly service, perhaps it's better that they take charge of everything that's important.

But seriously, perhaps we all need to read Hayek's The Road to Serfdom.