Category: Politics

Buyer’s Remorse

Sometimes, a concept can be so obvious that even David Brooks sees it. Brooks, the New York Times’ wishy-washy man of the Right no wakes up to the obvious and that Barack Obama is not a moderate at all and that he and the Democratic Party are engaged in an orgy of spending and ideological experimentation.

Brooks and other erstwhile conservatives—I’m looking at you, Chris Buckley—are just figuring out what should have been obvious all along: Barack Obama is not a moderate, and never was. He just played one on TV.

As Brooks puts it:

Those of us who consider ourselves moderates — moderate-conservative, in my case — are forced to confront the reality that Barack Obama is not who we thought he was. His words are responsible; his character is inspiring. But his actions betray a transformational liberalism that should put every centrist on notice. As Clive Crook, an Obama admirer, wrote in The Financial Times, the Obama budget “contains no trace of compromise. It makes no gesture, however small, however costless to its larger agenda, of a bipartisan approach to the great questions it addresses. It is a liberal’s dream of a new New Deal.”

Where were these people during the campaign? What in Obama’s background suggested that he would be anything more than a doctrinaire left-wing liberal? His Senate voting record was the most liberal in the Senate by any objective measure. He grew up in the Chicago political machine. He was raised in a comfortable liberal orthodoxy. His books are filled with grand liberal planning. He’s a devotee of left-wing radical Saul Alinsky. And yes, Gov. Palin was right, he was “pallin’ around” with such esteemed “moderates” as Rev. Jeremiah Wright and admitted left-wing terrorist Bill Ayers.

What did these “moderates” expect?

They let their own gauzy feelings dictate their choices rather than evaluating Obama as he really is. They used Obama as an empty vessel into which they poured their vision of the ideal candidate. Of course, their idealized version of Barack Obama had little do with the real Barack Obama once one gets beyond the superficial elements. They thought that because Obama was so intelligent and articulate that he wouldn’t be so radical. How little did they know…

President Obama is not a moderate. He never was, no matter how fervently ersatz conservatives like David Brooks and Chris Buckley wanted him to be. Now that Obama has power, he is showing his true spots. The real Barack Obama is the most radical President in American history, even more so than LBJ. He aims to fundamentally transform American culture and society into something akin to a European welfare state. He does not believe in limited government, he believes in the expansive state. He does not believe in moderation, but in radical transformation. He does not need the support of people like Brooks or Buckley, he has the power he needs, and he will wield it.

Obama will not listen to Brooks’ proposed “moderate manifesto”—he doesn’t need to. He has his power. He has a Congress that is equally committed to left-wing experimentation. He has a media that is utterly supplicant to him. He has a populace that has yet to see through his charming façade. The more the markets sink in reaction to his dangerous experimentation, the more he can use the crisis as a justification.

Obama’s critics were dismissed as reactionaries for not recognizing his brilliance—and now it looks like those of us who questioned the President’s much-vaunted moderation were right. Brooks and the others who were so swept away by Obama’s surface appeal are not belatedly coming to see what others saw from the beginning. The problem is that it’s too late—Obama was figuratively and literally given a blank check, and now the “moderates” no longer matter.

We’re All Merrily Skipping Down The Road To Serfdom

For those who want to know what our future will look like, here’s a brief preview. F.A. Hayek’s brilliant The Road to Serfdom in a short illustrated form.

I’ve never been more bleak about the future of this country. The road to serfdom isn’t obvious. Nobody intentionally elects a dictator for the purpose of electing a dictator. Instead they pour the ill-conceived hopes and dreams into a Leader who promises them the world so long as they give him the power to create it.

Now, I don’t necessarily think that Barack Obama is a dictator. But the point is that he doesn’t have to be. He’s just creating the ideal conditions for one. What truly saddens me, what truly sickens me, is if that Obama passed the “Fairness Doctrine” to silence his critics, created “civilian work corps” to put an army of young men and women into his service, and arrested business owners, nearly half of the county would go along. Nearly half are so filled with irrational love for Obama that they’d let him become a Caesar. It isn’t about issues, it isn’t about the country, it’s about some gauzy notion of “hope.”

To hell with “hope.”

As Charles Murray says, everything Obama is promising has already been tried and failed. There’s nothing new. This isn’t “change we can believe in” this is “I can say whatever the hell I want and you simpletons will slurp it up.” It’s the wish list of every statist in the last 40 years, and it represents a radical and dangerous turn away from tested principles and towards abject statism.

Universal healthcare? It means the government will have to ration what we get. That’s the only way such a system can possibly work. Even worse, it doesn’t scale up at all. Which means America’s larger population will make the endemic and innate problem with universal healthcare worse than in a smaller country like Sweden or even Canada. Which means that we had better get used to dying in lines, and forget risky or experimental treatments.

Universal college education? For most people, a four-year college degree is a waste of time and money. I believe in a liberal arts education, but I’m not so arrogant as to say that it’s right for everyone. But now Obama will make the value of that degree effectively zero—and a four-year college degree is already worth nowhere near what people pay for it. My suspicion is that the real reason for this is ideological: make everyone go through the like-minded public university system and you’ll have an ideologically “pure” citizenry. Even if that’s not the plan, that will be the effect. A better solution would be to make our existing system actually work, but that doesn’t concentrate any political power into the President’s hands.

A cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions? It’s already been tried and failed. It’s a way of creating a stealth tax increase on energy consumption. A more honest approach would be to just slap a tax on energy. But Obama doesn’t want to be honest, he wants to play to the mob. That cap-and-trade programs hurt the Third World doesn’t seem to matter.

I don’t like to ascribe the worst motives for people, but even so President Obama is taking this country farther down the Road to Serfdom than it even has been. It may take decades for America to recover from what he is doing. He is pouring sugar into the engine of American prosperity, and we will suffer for it.

I love this country. I want this country to succeed, regardless of who is the occupant of the Oval Office or what party is in power. But the end result of what Obama wants will be a United States that is following the disastrous path of statism. At best America will suffer a “Lost Decade” like Japan.

At worst? America takes the road to serfdom to its inevitable conclusion.

I wish this were merely sour political grapes. But the future of this country truly is in deep peril. The way to the future is through individualism, hard work, limited government, thrift, ingenuity, and political pluralism. Today, we have a President who wants a cradle-to-the-grave welfare state and has the audacity to not only hope for one, but to say it in no uncertain terms.

I fear that if we continue down this road, the future will belong to India and China, while this nation lives out its twilight years in increasing obsolescence.

Andrew Sullivan’s Further Descent Into Hackery

Andrew Sullivan went from being an astute conservative columnist to a frothing partisan hack somewhere around the 2004 elections. His latest column in The Sunday Times amply demonstrates his fall into hackery. Now, because the Republicans have the sheer audacity to defy the Leader and go against a budget-busting spending bill in a time of fiscal turmoil, they are akin to the Taliban.

So much for not questioning the patriotism of others.

For instance, Sullivan makes this blatantly silly argument:

From the outset, the Republicans in Washington pored over the bill to find trivial issues to make hay with. They found some small funding for HIV and sexually transmitted diseases prevention; they jumped up and down about renovating the national mall; they went nuts over a proposal – wait for it – to make some government buildings more energy-efficient; they acted as if green research and federal funds for new school building were the equivalent of funding terrorism. And this after eight years in which they managed to turn a surplus into a trillion-dollar deficit and added a cool $32 trillion to the debt the next generation will have to pay for. Every now and again their chutzpah and narcissism take one’s breath away. But it’s all they seem to know.

Which conveniently ignores the very nature of the bill—a trillion-dollar giveaway to Democratic special interests. It is hardly “narcissistic” or an act of “chutzpah” to cry foul when the Treasury is being raided in a time when America’s debts are already threatening our fiscal future. But Sullivans M.O. is already well established—Republicans are always evil schemers seeking to establish their own power while the Obama Administration is always pure of heart. His simple morality play has little to do with reality, but it is a constant struggle for Mr. Sullivan to ignore what is in front of his nose.

The Republicans are an opposition party, and they have finally rediscovered the idea that they are supposed to be the party of small and responsible government. Apparently to Sullivan, their job now is to roll over at acquiesce to whatever the Great Obama wishes them to do. That someone who so frequently quotes George Orwell cannot see the Orwellian implications of our times is distressing.

That Sullivan adds some faint condemnation of the Democrats is only due to it allowing him to show how magnanimous and post-partisan the Obama Administration is. That the Obama Administration is attempting to politicize the Census is ignored. That the Obama Administration’s attempts at partisan “compromise” is largely window dressing is ignored. The ethical scandals that surround the Obama Administration is immaterial to Sullivan’s worldview. The resignation of Sen. Gregg as Commerce Secretary? To Sullivan, this had nothing to do with the Obama Administration’s evisceration of the post in favor of having Rahm Emmanuel run the show, it was clearly an act by the Republican base.

Sullivan is capable of deep though, but he choses not to exercise it, instead going for the rhetoric of a third-string Daily Kos blogger. How tiresome must it be to be yet another unquestioning mouthpiece for the Obama Administration. One would think it to be intellectually deadening after a while. But perhaps Mr. Sullivan has become tired of thinking and would rather trade his insightfulness and relevance for the adulation of the “netroots” mob.

The loss of such a formerly insightful thinker, alas, diminishes our political rhetoric at a time when it’s at one of its lows.

Atlas Is Shrugging

The U.S. economy shed 598,000 jobs in January, the worst job loss since 1974. There is no doubt that the U.S. economy is in a state of crisis. Our government is only making it worse.

It is more than mere coincidence that this huge job loss occurred in the same month that President Obama signed the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act into law. The Ledbetter Act basically means that employers can be sued for “paycheck discrimination” years after the events occurred. In Ms. Ledbetter’s case, the alleged discrimination happened so far ago that the supervisor involved had not only left the company, but died. This Act, instead of making things “fairer” for employees, puts a massive burden on employers who now have to worry about lawsuits stemming from events decades old.

This is what the business environment will be like under the Obama Administration. There will be more regulations and those regulations will be written by representatives of big industries and radical special interests. There will be higher taxes on everything from corporate income taxes to personal income taxes to the estate tax, and there is a strong possibility of a carbon tax that will raise prices on every single good that needs shipping. The web of regulations, higher taxes, and the way society is treating the very idea of entrepreneurialism is making American business falter.

The result: more lost American jobs.

This “stimulus” bill will not help. It will give hundreds of billions to political contributors, and barely anything to American small business. Big business, the ones with the lawyers and lobbyists, have already gamed the system. The Democratic Party has no room for the interests of American small business, even though their employees are half of the American workforce. The situation for American small business will be dire: not only will there be more taxes, more regulation, and more self-righteous condemnation from Washington, but the credit markets are still tight. Unless you’re in a field that will be the recipient of government spending, like health care or road construction, forget hiring employees, you have to cut expenses to the bone right now.

American jobs are being lost because we are punishing the people who create them.

President Obama and the irresponsible Congressional Democrats are pushing this recession into a depression. Their wrong-headed pro-government economic policy is turning America into a banana republic. It is crucial that they be stopped.

Atlas is shrugging, and the world is at the brink of tumbling right off.

‘Shovel Ready’ BS

Popular Mechanics has a great piece on the myth of “shovel ready” infrastructure projects:

The programs that would meet the bill’s 90-day restriction are, for the most part, an unappealing mix of projects that were either shelved after being fully designed and engineered, and have since become outmoded or irrelevant, or projects with limited scope and ambition. No one’s building a smart electric grid or revamping a water system on 90 days notice. The best example of a shovel-ready project, and what engineers believe could become the biggest recipient of the transportation-related portion of the bill’s funding, is road resurfacing—important maintenance work, but not a meaningful way to rein in a national infrastructure crisis. “In developing countries, there are roads that are so bad, they create congestion, because drivers are constantly forced to slow down,” says David Levinson, an associate professor in the University of Minnesota’s civil engineering department. “That’s not the case here. If the road’s a little bit rougher, drivers will feel it, but that’s not going to cause you to go any slower. So the economic benefit of those projects is pretty low.”

That might be acceptable to people focused purely on fostering rapid job growth‹but, ironically, such stimulus spending could fall short on that measure, as well. “In the 1930s, when you were literally building with shovels, that might have made sense. That was largely unskilled labor. Today, it’s blue collar, but it’s not unskilled,” Levinson says. “The guy brushing the asphalt back and forth is unskilled, but the guy operating the steamroller isn’t. And there’s an assumption out there that construction workers are interchangeable between residential and highway projects. But a carpenter isn’t a whole lot of help in building a road.”

It’s ironic given the I-35W bridge collapse being used as a symbol of America’s “failing infrastructure”—that collapse was the result of a design flaw that should have been spotted in the design phase. And what is our reaction to such problems? Push through a bunch of projects in a hurry rather than perform the sort of painstaking design that needs to be done before a project is truly “shovel ready.”

There is some wisdom to spending on infrastructure, but let us be honest. It won’t make a dent in the unemployment rate unless you believe that you can take a stockbroker and put her into a bulldozer and call that good enough. It won’t stimulate the economy because the money will go to government contractors who are the least affected by the economic slowdown. And what stimulus it does produce won’t be likely to come about until well after the slowdown is past. Justifying this sort of spending on the grounds of economic stimulus isn’t realistic.

If we want to spend money on infrastructure, we should do it right. That means assessing our needs in a realistic manner, spending only on projects that will make a real difference, having a realistic plan to build these projects, building them right the first time, and having a competitive bidding process to make sure that money isn’t being funneled to campaign contributors.

This bill is not about stimulus. It’s about the Democratic Party looting the future to pay off their political supporters. It is nearly 100% pure pork that will saddle the future with at least another $1,000,000,000,000 in debt—not counting interest. Even the Congressional Budget Office finds that the “stimulus” bill will just shift the costs to future generations. We can’t rob Peter to pay Paul and expect to get away with it. Recent history should demonstrate all too well why such ideas don’t work.

We need a real stimulus package, not an act of wanton irresponsibility. If President Obama were to demonstrate real leadership, he would tell Reid and Pelosi to stop playing childish partisan games and send him a bill that is nothing but stimulus and no pork—and if they refuse, he should veto it. We need real infrastructure repair, not political cronyism. The only shovel that’s ready to go is the shovel needed to clear out all the B.S. surrounding this bill.

What Steele Means

Marc Ambinder has a perceptive take on the election of Michael Steele, the first black Chairman of the Republican Party:

Did Republicans choose Steele as a token? Some RNC members will think so, as will many skeptical Democrats. But Steele won this thing by himself. The RNC is a fractious, uncooperative bunch. And Steele patiently politicked his way through six ballots. Just a few hours ago, my correspondent Will DiNovi saw Steele and Ohio’s Kenneth Blackwell face to face in the hall. “I know we’ve disagreed on a lot of things,” Steele was telling him. Blackwell waited a little — then he endorsed Steele.

Steele’s election won’t help the party attrack black voters immediately, but if Steele sets the right tone, he could help the party compete for them in the (way) future. As GOP strategists have always known, and noted, somewhat dyspeptically, it’s white suburban voters, particularly women, who are responsive to a diversity message. The RNC isn’t diverse yet; only five black delegates were chosen to attend the national convention. Steele was disgusted by that. It prompted him to run.

Steele’s election is a good thing for the GOP. What the party needs is a transfusion of new blood, and it needs it now. The GOP has painted itself into being a regional party of the West and the South. Granted, those are the parts of the country that are growing, but that’s not enough to win. Steele’s ambitious plan to make the Republican Party competitive in the Northeast is what’s needed. The GOP cannot cede any territory to the Democrats. Republicans should be making inroads with socially conservative black voters in the inner cities, but they have never really bothered to make that outreach. Steele seems likely to change that.

What the GOP should not do is abandon social conservatism. Yes, it should abandon the form of social conservatism that they have now, which is reactionary and offputting. Instead of preaching hellfire and damnation, the GOP needs to recast social issues as kitchen table cultural issues. The GOP approach has been to allow themselves to be painted as bigots—and sometimes with just reason—rather than cast social issues as issues that affect the average voter. People don’t care about the effect things have on some amorphous “society” they care about raising their kids. If the GOP wants to stay relevant, they can’t become a shadow of the Democrats and abandon their values, but they must make those values relevant to voters. Again, Steele is more likely to get this than most.

Perhaps Steele will fail. However, what is important is that the Republican Party not remain stagnant. That is a sure path to failure. The Republican “brand” is tarnished and is in bad need of reformation. The same people who got the party into this mess will not get us out. Thankfully, Steele is a reformer with a great deal of vision—and vision and reform are precisely what the GOP needs.

Why Small Government Is Better For The Little Guy

Hardvard economist Edward L. Glaeser has a fascinating and provocative piece on what he calls “small government egalitarianism”:

In the 20th century, President Woodrow Wilson campaigned on a “New Freedom,” opposing Teddy Roosevelt’s big-government Progressivism. While Roosevelt wanted the government to manage monopolies, Wilson wanted trust-busting and less protectionism. Wilson perceptively noted the dangers of too much government: “If the government is to tell big business men how to run their business, then don’t you see that big business men have to get closer to the government even than they are now?”

Wilson’s warning could not be more prescient. Look at the “stimulus” bill snaking its way through Congress. It is positively loaded with pork for special interests, handout for big donors, and only a fraction of it will go to the sort of crucial infrastructure projects that were supposed to be its very purpose. The “stimulus” bill could not be a better example of why Big Government hurts the poor. Even setting aside the issue of whether government spending creates jobs at all, this bill certainly won’t put enough people to work to make even a dent in the skyrocketing unemployment lines. Instead, billions of dollars will go to the politically well-connected and unscrupulous. The difference between Bill Blogojevich and most of Congress is that Blagojevich got caught.

Small government is good government. Small government helps the American worker because it does not allow the kind of concentrations of power that we have now. Why do big corporations spend billions on lobbying Congress to tilt the law in their favor? Because Congress has the power to tilt the laws in their favors. The reason why the Founders deliberately created a limited government of enumerated powers is to prevent the kind of naked interest-buying that we see now. The more power you give the government, the more incentives there are for government to use their power for their own advantage.

With Congress’ approval at a historic low, the idea that the case for small government is no longer worth making seems absurd. If anything, now is the best time to push a vision for a government that is smaller, more responsible, and more accountable. That such a government would ultimately be more equitable is a beneficial side-effect.

Politically, the Republicans should be doing what Sen. McCain threatened to do and “make famous” every single pork-barrel project in the “stimulus” bill. The message here is simple: tens of thousands of Americans are losing their jobs every day and Congress is paying off its campaign contributors with pork. Americans should be disgusted by the performance of Congress right now. The myth that this trillion-dollar boondoggle is anything but a case of Congress acting like robber barons of old should be laid to rest. Congress wants to claim that they’re “creating jobs”, but instead they’re giving more and more cash to the same politically well-connected actors.

This is precisely why small government is so crucial to having a more equitable society. If Congress were only allowed to spend money on truly national projects there would be no ability to send pork to campaign contributors. Big Government does not produce an more equitable society, it rewards those who side with the politically powerful. Small government benefits the people because it doesn’t allow Congress to game the system to benefit their own interests.

Take a simple but common example. When new regulations come down from all the federal agencies, have John and Jane Doe on Main Street had any opportunity to shape that new rule? Of course not, even if they compulsively wade through each daily edition of the massive Federal Register to see what rules are being proposed the most they can realistically do is send a strongly worded letter. Can Washington interest groups shape that rule? They pay lobbyists great amounts of money to do exactly that. Can business interests shape that rule? Absolutely, and they have their own army of lobbyists for just that purpose. So is it any shock that John and Jane Doe are under-represented in the process?

It’s a myth that “big business” and powerful special interests love small government and hate regulation. Why should they? They have the clout in Congress to make sure that the regulation benefits them. They can use their political connections to steer millions of taxpayer dollars to them. They can benefit from the access they have to Congress and even the White House. They know that P.J. O’Rourke’s great maxim is correct: “when buying and selling is legislated, then the first thing to be bought and sold are legislators.” The bigger and more intrusive government is, the higher the barriers to new competitors. Look at the most heavily-regulated markets in this country: they tend to be dominated by a handful of large players who can use their access to lobby government to keep those regulations in place. They benefit the most from the regulatory state, and they have every interest in seeing Big Government stay big.

If you’re a little player, like a “Mom and Pop” operation, forget it. The costs of regulatory compliance are too high. If you can’t afford the lobbyists, you can’t play the game, and you get squashed.

That is why we need smaller, less intrusive, and more accountable government. We need to reduce the incentives for the big players to game the system and increase the chances for small players to enter the market. That way the benefits go to the best and the brightest, not the most politically well-connected.

Here is where liberalism fundamentally gets it wrong: government regulation of the market will never produce equality. It will only benefit the big players. If we want a more egalitarian and equitable society we cannot put in place barriers that keep the small players out. Glaeser is right, and the case for small-government egalitarianism is one that needs to be made now more than ever.

Congress To Illinois: Get Rid Of Blago Or No Cash

Jim Geraghty notes a curious provision in the stimulus bill directed at the State of Illinois:

None of the funds provided by this Act may be made available to the State of Illinois, or any agency of the State, unless (1) the use of such funds by the State is approved in legislation enacted by the State after the date of the enactment of this Act, or (2) Rod R. Blagojevich no longer holds the office of Governor of the State of Illinois.The preceding sentence shall not apply to any funds provided directly to a unit of local government (1) by a Federal department or agency, or (2) by an established formula from the State.

It seems to me that this move is unconstitutional. The federal government may condition receipt of federal funds on doing certain things. For example, the Supreme Court upheld the federal government only allowing for highway funding to the states if they raised the drinking age to 21. South Dakota v. Dole, 483 U.S. 203 (1987). However, that case only allowed the government to do so for reasons related to the “general welfare”. Helvering v. Davis, 301 U. S. 619, 640–41 (1937).

The question is whether Illinois getting rid of Gov. Blagojevich is related to the “general welfare.” Say what you will of the corrupt and profane Illinois governor, he has not yet been convicted of any crime. This probably isn’t an illegal bill of attainder since it’s punishing Illinois rather than Blagojevich himself, but it’s still a gross violation of the principle of federalism. The “general welfare” isn’t a way for Congress to advance narrow issues or play political hardball. It would be blatantly unconstitutional for Congress to condition federal funding on a state electing a Republican governor or electing a female governor. So why should it be constitutional for the federal government to withhold funds from Illinois because they refuse to impeach Blagojevich on Congress’ timetable.

Even though the courts generally defer to Congress on what is defined as being in the national interest, this seems to be a rather clear case of Congress overstepping their constitutional limits.

Socialism 2.0

Former Clinton-era Secretary of Labor Robert Reich argues in the TPMCafe that the bailout culture is “lemon socialism”:

America has embraced Lemon Socialism.

The federal government — that is, you and I and every other taxpayer — has taken ownership of giant home mortgagors Fannie and Freddie, which are by now basket cases. We’ve also put hundreds of millions into Wall Street banks, which are still flowing red ink and seem everyday to be in worse shape. We’ve bailed out the giant insurer AIG, which is failing. We’ve given GM and Chrysler the first installments of what are likely to turn into big bailouts. It’s hard to find anyone who will place a big bet on the future of these two. …

Put it all together and at this rate, the government — that is, taxpayers — will own much of the housing, auto, and financial sectors of the economy, those sectors that are failing fastest.

He’s right. With the Obama Administration seriously considering the nationalization of a large swath of the banking industry, the government is rapidly heading for a new kind of socialism. Call it “socialism 2.0”, in which the government takes failing industries and buys them out in order to artificially prop up a faltering economy. Injecting capital in a frozen market is not a bad idea. Nationalizing failing industries is not. What the Bush Administration did and the Obama Administration is continuing amounts to little more than throwing good money after bad.

US Debt to GDP Chart
US Debt to GDP Chart

Our economic problem is structural. We have too much debt. This chart says it all: America’s level of debt has simply skyrocketed. That is not only personal debt (mortgages, credit cards), that is government debt (Social Security liabilities, Medicare, government bonds). The current strategy has been to prop up that unsustainable level of debt. In the case of President Obama’s “stimulus” package, the effect is to dramatically increase federal debt in the hopes that we can spend our way out of recession.

The short version is that our strategy is to massively increase our debt to solve the problems created by our massive debt. That hardly seems like the most sane strategy.

If the United States were another country (say Argentina) and we were seeking IMF aid, we’d immediately be put on an austerity plan. Government spending would have to be cut to get the level of debt down. Nationalizing industries would be completely out of the question. Inflation would have to be kept in check to ensure that it didn’t spiral out of control.

The IMF has put other countries on such plans before, with the approval of the U.S. government. Now is a time for a taste of our own medicine. As hard is it is for some to imagine cutting government spending in a recession, we’ve made others do exactly that before. A problem caused by an unsustainable level of spending is not going to get better by spending even more. Getting our government under control is crucial to the long-term success of this country.

Reich is ultimately right on his point: we’re trying a half-assed form of socialism that will simply not work. By incentivizing failure at the same time we punish success with high corporate tax rates, the government is sending exactly the wrong signals. What this country needs is a stronger business climate, and that won’t come about unless there’s a shakeup in the business world.

Every dollar that goes to GM is a dollar that props up a failing regime. If we are to have a 21st Century economy, we cannot be in the business of making sure nobody fails. The process of “creative destruction” is crucial to a healthy economy. Socialism 2.0 is unlikely to be any more successful than Socialism 1.0 was—and until policymakers in Washington realize that, our economic problems are likely to only get worse.

Dissent Is SO Yesterday!

David Harsanyi asks whether dissent is still patriotic in the Age of Obama. The answer, I suspect, is no. Instead, watch for any opposition to President Obama, whether measured or not, to be labeled as “divisiveness” and cast aside. As Harsanyi puts it:

Some of you must still believe that politicians are meant to serve rather than be worshiped. And there must be someone out there who considers partisanship a healthy, organic reflection of our differences rather than something to be surrendered in the name of so- called unity — which is, after all, untenable, subjective and utterly counterproductive.

President Obama’s call to unity was standard boilerplate stuff. After all, one of the mottos of this nation is E pluribus unum—”out of many, one.” But at the same time, there’s a difference between coming together as a nation and being forced to all read from the same playbook. The strength of America is in our ability to have legitimate disagreements about politics and policy while still acknowledging our common values. That is a balance, and I fear that Obama will fail to understand the difference. These passages from his Inaugural Address does not bode well:

On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord.

Have we? I despise the idea that one party of another has a monopoly on either hope or fear, and it’s a transparently dumb argument to make. Those of us who voted for McCain voted out of hope as well, hope for a better future in which government did not trample upon the right of the people to pursue their own happiness. Does President Obama really believe his own bull about him being a living symbol of hope? If not, are these words just more empty rhetoric, sugary words devoid of substance? Then why make them?

I suspect the answer is that Obama is a believer in his own hype, and that scares me deeply.

On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics.

Like hell we have.

Every politician plays hardball. Partisanship is inevitable in a free society, and that’s a feature, not a bug. In order for this statement to make sense, Obama must believe 1) that he is somehow above politics, which is transparently ludicrous for any politician to say; and 2) that our politics would be better if we jettisoned the “worn out dogmas” that he doesn’t like.

As a good Burkean, this makes me gag. Our politics is meaningless without the beliefs that President Obama wants to denigrate as being “worn out.” Our politics needs vital disagreement on key issues. Democracy is never about conformity, else it becomes little more than the rule of the mob. But when you’re at the head of the mob, I suppose, mob rule doesn’t sound all that bad.

We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things. The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.

Note what Obama is doing here. He’s first calling partisanship “childish” rather than a necessary part of vital democratic debate. He’s then wrapping himself in the mantle of the American character. It’s the classic way that a politician tries to diminish his or her opponents without appearing to do so. First you delegitimize the “other” then you wrap yourself in the values you wish to be seen as embodying. It’s a classic rhetorical trick, and Obama plays it to the hilt.

If that weren’t enough, this passage further demonstrates Obama’s feelings towards dissent:

What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them – that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply. The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works – whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified.

Hear that, all of us “cynics”? We’re too stupid to realize that now that Obama is on the scene, the question about the role of the State in our lives is no longer relevant. Now the question is not whether the government should interfere in our lives, but just how much it will take to achieve the desired ends of the left-wing nanny state. Our “stale arguments” aren’t even worth discussing, now is the Era of Government, and we are but mere roadbumps on the way.

Sadly, those words betray a worldview that would delegitimize debate. Whenever a politician speaks of “transcending politics” or whatever mumbo-jumbo they use, what they ultimately mean is that they would like their side to always prevail. Politics isn’t a flaw in our system, it is our system. The moment we start arguing that legitimate debate over issues is “childish” or decide to chuck out the “worn out dogmas” of the opposition party, we abandon the principle of democracy in for tyranny.

Not once in the speech does President Obama countenance any opposition to his worldview. Not once in his speech does Obama even admit to the legitimacy of those who see things through another lens. Rather it was entirely about how now that Obama is in charge it’s time to “remake” America, whether those cynical believers in the value of a limited government of enumerated powers like it or not.

It is one thing for America to be one nation united by common bonds of history and culture. It is another for someone to declare that their election is a triumph of hope over fear. The worst thing that could happen is that they actually start to believe that.

I will keep my “worn out” dogma and be “childish” then. We should, and must, act as a loyal opposition, never sacrificing the national interest solely to make a political point, but that does not imply rolling over for Obama’s “remade” America. In the words of another President, “aggressive fighting for the right is the noblest sport the world affords.” Just because President Obama says that the days of partisan disagreement is over will not make it so, nor should it.