Of Free Speech and Insensitivity Training

There is a poignant scene in “Lawrence of Arabia”, a movie with many poignant scenes, in which Lawrence demonstrates to a fellow officer how to snuff out a candle.  He pinches the flame with his fingers.  The other officer gives it a try but jerks back his hand when his fingers are scorched. 

“That hurts,” the officer complains.  Lawrence replies, “Certainly it hurts.  The trick is not minding that it hurts.”

There is a lesson there, particularly important for a society that has become hypersensitive to injury, real or imagined.  Hurt may come from something as small as a look—or failure to look.  It may come from an article of clothing, either worn or neglected.  Lately flags have been targeted as sources of personal and even societal pain.  Hurt may come from something as small as a word.  Indeed, I think that most often today and in our society, both words and our sensitivity to words have become sharpened.

If we are to preserve freedom of speech—in all its important varieties—we need to develop some insensitivity, as in not minding when it hurts.  Freedom of speech only matters when someone hears something he does not like.  The choice then is intolerance and silence or freedom and not minding the hurt. 

Another way to look at it is that we most desire freedom of speech when we are the speaker.  From the point of view of listener, we may have mixed emotions.  We may like what we say, but when we do not like what we hear do we wish to silence the speaker, or do we accept the options of free speech, to turn away or to endure another’s unpleasant rodomontade?

Freedom of speech was made part of the First Amendment, because rulers and monarchs were at pains to inflict genuine physical hurt whenever they took offense at the words of their subjects.  The First Amendment’s protection of free speech was needed to protect people using words that hurt people in government, that offended people in power.

Even though enshrined in the Constitution, freedom of speech has to be won by each generation, because it is constantly in jeopardy.  Americans are nearly unanimous in their support of freedom of speech when it is speech that they like, speech that reinforces their own views, and especially speech that praises and flatters.  We do not particularly need the Constitution to protect that kind of speech.  Speech that is unpopular, speech that goes against the grain, speech that is obnoxious to our opinions, speech that challenges our beliefs, that is the speech the Founders fought to protect.  Most of human progress has come from that kind of speech.  It is speech that is worth protecting today and that many try to silence.

President Obama and his political friends are fond of declaring that “the debate is over,” whether referring to Obamacare, the Dodd-Frank Act, climate change, same-sex marriage, or other important issues of significant disagreement.  I expect that soon we will hear President Obama, Secretary of State Kerry, and other administration spokesmen insist that the debate is over with regard to the nuclear deal with Iran.  In a free republic, can the debate ever really be over?

This is nothing new; it is a continuation of a very old struggle.  Despots great and petty since early ages have exercised what power they might to silence ideas and expressions they did not want to hear, or did not want others to hear.  The gallows, flames, and torture chambers of yesteryear are matched today by bullets, bombs, and bayonets from radical Islam and totalitarian governments.  In the West, where constitutions solemnly embrace free speech, voices are silenced by public ridicule, elaborate and intrusive regulations on what can and cannot be said and when and where—reinforced by government fines, restrictions, confiscations, and jail time. 

I recently visited my son at his new job at a large factory.  He was very careful to spell out to me a lengthy list of subjects I should not bring up, whether from fear of his colleagues, company policies, or federal, state, and local regulations.  I have been given similar training at my place of work.

When I was young I was taught to be courteous and not seek to offend.  I was also taught to be slow to take offence.  Do children today repeat the rhyme I heard as a child?  “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names can never hurt me.”  I wonder.  Or are our children taught today that there is great reward in being the sensitized “victim” of someone else’s “offensive” words?  Where do we find freedom in that?

Of Warming Planets and Cooling Economies

Did you notice when the Obama Administration paused in its ballyhooing about global warming?  President Obama and his officials had been busily hustling the warming of the planet and its attendant disasters—which they insist can only be fixed by increasing government control of our lives, from birthing to breathing.  The President was in Florida, blaming the future hurricane season—which has not yet happened—on global warming.  “The best climate scientists in the world are telling us that extreme weather events like hurricanes are likely to become more powerful.”  What President Obama did not mention—anywhere in his speech at the National Hurricane Center in Miami—was that the scientists predicted a “below-normal” hurricane season for 2015.  Was that mercy because of or in spite of global warming? 

Perhaps we should not blame the President for leaving that little item of information out, since for each of the last several years the cited “best climate scientists” (whoever they are) had predicted extraordinarily active and destructive hurricane seasons.  Since each season turned out to be unusually mild, the official forecasters have now changed their tune, putting themselves solidly in-sync with recent trends.  Do not put yourself at risk with a long investment on it either way. 

As for global warming, however, the President and those who say they agree with him insist that the debate is over (in either science or a free nation can the debate ever really be over?), meaning that it is unacceptable to disagree with them.  If you can’t say something calamitous, then don’t say anything at all.

Then, suddenly and quite unexpectedly, the global warming talk stopped.  There was a mercifully, if brief, moratorium on warming warnings.  Instead of predicted calamity, a real calamity was at hand that required some ‘splaining.  The most recent report on the nation’s economic growth was announced.  Not only had growth slowed, as measured by government number crunchers, the economy had actually declined in the first 3 months of 2015.  That seemed to come as a surprise to no one who is either without a job or working in a job that is something less than the job held before 2009.  But it was unwelcome news to the Administration that has been working on economic revival for going on seven years.

Instead of global warming, the Administration needed cold weather to blame for the decline in economic activity during January, February, and March.  The lead official White House explanative was, “harsh winter weather”.  I did not make this up, and you are not supposed to notice how convenient White House excuses are.  It was better that global warming talk was cooled for a moment lest people recognize the contradictions in the official propaganda and begin to wonder whether White House policies were working.

Winter weather is not a novel excuse for failed government programs.  The old Soviet Union blamed repeated crop failures on harsh winters (in Russia?  Who knew?).  The similarity in excuses used by the Obama White House and the Soviet Politburo is not accidental.  Central planners can survive only if they have at the ready a list of excuses of things beyond their control.  The list could be a long one, since in the end there is not very much about the economy that central planners can control, if control means making things go the way intended.  To quote the character Jayne Cobb, in Serenity, “what you plan and what takes place ain’t ever been exactly similar.”

Of Presidents and Training for the Job, 2015

More and more I have been struggling for the words to express my concern over the frightening incompetence of the current President of the United States.  Barack Obama's economic blunders deepened and prolonged the recession and bequeathed to us the most anemic recovery of modern times.  Most of us have been seriously harmed by those policies, some more than others.  Unfortunately, the extent of his economic errors are obscured by the benighted economic management in Europe, which amazingly is managing even to underperform ours.

President Obama's politics have yielded the opposite of what he publicly promised:  division in place of unity, secrecy and deception in place of open government, exclusion of those who disagree with him in place of inclusive embrace of open debate, privilege for the few in place of opportunity for the many, racial bigotry for political gain in place of a "post racial" society, rule by breaking laws and ignoring the Constitution in place of rule of law.  I am sure that you could easily lengthen the list.  Again, these perfidies have been to some degree obscured by congressional Democrat leaders far too willing to compromise their duties of office and the rights of the legislative branch of government, all to cover up and support the Obama Administration's outrages on the nation and the political institutions of the Republic.

Most frightful of all, however, is President Obama's dangerously bungling foreign policy.  No friend of the United States is safe from this Administration's blunders.  Vladimir Putin, the boss of a second rate economic and military power—albeit one with a formidable nuclear arsenal—has been able to engage in 19th Century military adventures of invasion, conquest, and territorial acquisition against little more than vacuous bully talk from Obama, the emptiness of which has produced similarly pitiful responses from the leading Powers of Western Europe, derision from Moscow, and fear among America's friends only recently escaped from the Soviet Union.  China commits aggression against India and the Philippines, threatens Japan, and toys with close relations with Russia to isolate the United States, while openly engaging in cyber attacks on the U.S. government and American industry.  Islamist barbarians increasingly brutalize Muslims, Jews, Christians, and humanists alike, undeterred by inchoate responses from Obama, who asserts leadership while failing to lead, other than with his transparent policies of pusillanimity and indecision.  American allies in the Middle East feel abandoned or betrayed, while enemies are emboldened; the best counter strategy that Barack Obama is able to envision is a plan that might delay but will not prevent the nuclear arming of the mullahs of Iran—committed to the incineration of Israel, the more Jews killed the better.  Each day seems to extend the list of foreign policy failures.

While considering the consequences of an amateur in the Oval Office, I came across a brief note I wrote during the 2008 presidential campaign.  It might be immodest for me to point out how correct my warnings proved.  I can make no claims to perspicacity, as all of this was rather obvious.  No self congratulations are in order.  It is too dangerous a world to trust the Presidency of the United States to one whose inexperience is only matched by his hubris.  This is what I penned August 25, 2008, just before Barack Obama received the nomination of the Democrats:      


There are some jobs you just cannot safely do without proper training and experience. Flying an airplane is one that comes to mind. Driving a bus is another. I would put being President of the United States in the Twenty-First Century on the list, too.

President of the United States was a tough job in the days of George Washington. It was even a challenge in the days of Millard Fillmore. It has not become any easier in recent years, and next year it will be a very big job. Considering the global responsibilities of the United States, with several irresponsible oil-drunk regimes threatening peace and freedom (ours and other’s) around the world, can we afford to enroll our new President in a foreign policy on-the-job-training program?

Economically as well, there is little room for error. So far we have gone through a year and a half of the housing market bust without falling into a recession. But our economic growth is anemic. A small false step or two can put us into a full-blown economic decline, exploding banking and financial markets that will then take years to recover. It is important that economic policy next year be led by someone who understands economic growth and how to promote it. The formula for growth—low taxes and steady prices—is well known to those who have learned the lesson; we do not need a novice who does not have enough experience to know that you cannot tax and spend your way to prosperity. We cannot afford his experiments with our jobs and livelihood.

That is why it is breathtaking that a major political party is on the verge of nominating for President someone so inexperienced as Barack Obama.  I am unable to recall a single nominee for President, by any major party, less prepared for the office than Barack Obama.  Really, there is the challenge for you. Name a nominee—Republican, Democrat, Whig, Federalist—less prepared than Obama.

Barack Obama likes to liken himself to Abraham Lincoln. I cannot claim to have known Abraham Lincoln or assert that he was a friend of mine, but I do say, Barack Obama is no Abraham Lincoln. Even liberal exaggerations of Obama’s undistinguished career cannot make it compare favorably with the long and grueling life experiences that schooled Lincoln for the White House.

In short, Obama does not have the training for the job. It may be that the Democrats’ talent pool is so thin that he will be nominated. But the job of President is too important—to all of us—to be extended to someone so unready.

Of Presidents and Derelicts

Barack Obama is no fan of the Constitution.  He has been known to criticize it for its focus on limiting government, for telling governments what they can and cannot do.  He prefers a Constitution that focuses more on telling governments what they should do, at least telling governments to do what he would like, including seeing to the “redistribution of wealth,” or what he calls elsewhere “redistributive change.”

Of course, that is a mischaracterization.  Not a mischaracterization of Obama’s views but of what the Constitution says.  It does limit government, but it also gives government specific responsibilities and the power to exercise those responsibilities.  Article I, Section 8 provides a very clear list of the federal government’s duties.  It is noteworthy that those enumerated responsibilities and powers are in the Article that establishes the Congress.  The list includes such things as providing for the common defense, borrowing and paying government debts, regulating foreign and interstate commerce, establishing standards for weights and measures, and so forth.

There are plenty of other provisions that limit the powers of the government and how it operates.  The Constitution is a balance of governmental duties within a structure intended carefully to limit the government.  As a limited government our Republic has prospered.  It has struggled either when its duties were neglected (as in the days of President Buchanan, who did nothing while he watched state after state rebel from the Union) or when the limitations have been eroded (as we have witnessed through much of the twentieth century and in the first 14 years of the twenty-first).

The President has specific powers and duties, too, nearly all of which are carefully linked with the role of the Congress.  For example, while the President does not make the laws—Article I, Section 1 gives “All legislative Powers” exclusively to the Congress—the President is authorized to make proposals to Congress and has the authority to veto legislation (but not change it) that Congress has approved.  Once an act of Congress becomes law, the President then has the explicit obligation to, “take Care that the Laws be fully executed” (Article II, Section 3).  

Note the words, “fully executed”.  The President takes an oath to fulfill those duties, and nowhere in oath or Constitution is the President authorized to execute the laws only as much as he likes or agrees with them.  Once something has become a law, the President may not set aside this or that part of the law or decide that he will only enforce the law so far.  His obligation is to take Care that the laws are fully executed.

Average Americans may not like this or that provision of law, but we are not at liberty to ignore any law that applies to us just because we do not like it.  The President is not exempt from that common responsibility of all citizens, either. As the chief government executive, who sought to hold his high office of public responsibility, he is even more obligated not only to obey the laws but to execute them, fully.  The President may not make the laws, he may not amend the laws, he may not change the laws, and he may not disregard the laws.  His duty is to execute the laws, and when he does not he is derelict in his duties. 

This is all in accordance with the important division of labor, the separation of powers that the Founders put into the very structure of the Constitution to combat the tendency of all humans to abuse power once it comes into their hands.  By dividing the power of government among three separate but coequal branches, dividing legislative power even further between House and Senate, and yet again separating government power between federal and state governments, the Founders went to clear and elaborate lengths to create checks and balances. 

Under the American system of government no branch, no person, no group of people in government, are to be able to do very much on their own without getting the other elements of government to go along.  Where they are not able to agree, where there is no consensus, for the safety of our freedoms government is prevented by constitutional law from moving forward unless substantial consensus among the different branches can be reached.  Those checks and balances again and again, throughout the more than two centuries of our Constitution, have forced the very human people in government to revisit their differences and come to terms with one another, however much they may disagree and be disagreeable.  There is safety for you and me in that.  And it helps keep our Union together, repeatedly forcing our leaders (and the parts of the nation that they represent and whose authority they exercise) to work with one another, like it or not.

Recently, President Obama has expressed impatience with the Constitution’s checks and balances.  After all, he personally, in and of himself, embodies an entire branch of government.  The other branches, Congress and the courts, have many different people with a messy variety of ideas.  President Obama complains that Congress cannot decide what it wants to do as quickly as he can.  In his view, why wait? 

By design, Congress of course has something of a multiple personality.  It is a gathering of elected representatives, reflecting the diversity of views among the people of the nation.  Appropriately, it takes time to build a consensus that accommodates those views, as it should.  But President Obama cannot wait.  He sees the need to accommodate no ideas other than his own.  He has decided that on this issue or that—today it is immigration laws—there is a limit, defined by himself, as to how much time Congress can take to consider things.  When time is up, he, the executive branch, will take the matter into his own hands, and pretend to the authority to do it.

His tool of choice today is to abjure his duty to execute the laws fully and instead to execute them partially, just to the extent and manner that suit his own desires, as he engages in another round of redistributive change.  That he is endeavoring to violate rather than execute our national, founding law, and his constitutional oath of office, apparently does not trouble him.  It is the Constitution itself that troubles him. 

But from where does he think he gets his authority to do anything.  When he breaks the Constitution, does he not break his very authority to act in the office that the Constitution created?

Of Majorities and Modesty

Perhaps with some weeks enough dust has settled to allow a few reactions to the recent American elections, with more perspective than can be gathered from listening to reporters interviewing reporters.  I will offer views that focus mostly on the results of the congressional elections, drawing upon experience from more than two decades of work in the Senate. 

I do not, however, wish to minimize the importance of the elections for governors and state legislatures.  In fact, I suspect that the next President of the United States will more than likely be a current or former governor than a Washington politico.  Most Presidents, historically, have come from the state governments, which I find encouraging for our federal system.  Moreover, judging from what we have seen, former Senators do not seem to make very good Presidents.  I cannot name one to whom we can look with admiration for what he accomplished in the White House.  There seems to be too much Washington blindness in them to govern effectively for our whole nation.

I am straying to an election yet to come, though.  Back to this year’s results, I will begin with the view that we should expect, with the media-scorned Republicans holding the majority in both House and Senate, that the finger of blame for all problems—real or imagined—will be pointed at “Congress.”  Disputes between legislative and executive branches will tend to be cast as exposing the nation to great danger as a result of congressional intransigence and/or “politics,” as if no real issues of policy—no questions of life, freedom, or wealth—are involved.

It is happening already.  In one bizarre report I heard this week on a major network “news” report, some Amtrak railroad drawbridge in the northeast is over a hundred years old and prone to getting stuck when it opens to let ships pass.  Amtrak wants a billion dollars or so to fix it, but, as the “news” story would have it, Republicans in the new Congress “are not looking for ways to spend money.”  That was the story.  Note the nothing new here.  The bridge has been around for a hundred years and did not suddenly become prone to malfunction this November.  But the election has now made it a story; a problem is arising, not because the President or the Democrats in Congress for several years did not seek to fix it, but because the new Republican majorities are not interested in spending money.  The bridge is not the problem in the story, the Republicans are.  Expect more of this kind of media “news.”

Second observation:  in recent decades Congress has increasingly surrendered more and more authority to the executive branch, including to the regulatory agencies.  The Senate, under the misleadership of Majority Leader Harry Read, has given up even more power and authority (perhaps in another post I will expound on lessons from the Senate of Rome, which by avoiding decisions paved the way for the Caesars—who were all too ready to make decisions).  The Democrats retain full control of the executive branch.  No small thing. In the remaining two years of the Obama Administration look for more aggressive activity from the White House and the regulators as they test just what they can try by regulation and regulatory fiat, without any detours to Capitol Hill.  To quote Jacob Marley’s ghost, “Much!”

When it comes to big Republican plans to make major changes, the quidnuncs will be fed explanations of the thinness of the Republican majorities, along with the “responsibility” of Republicans to share power with Democrats that the Democrats failed to win at the ballot box.  When it comes to work that needs to be done, the repeated common wisdom will be that the Republicans have the majority, so nothing should stop them from getting on with the job.  There will be little mention that the President can veto what Congress passes, and that Democrats  in the Senate will likely filibuster anything that the White House threatens to veto, saving the President the trouble—and political risk. 

Yet, there are things that the Republicans, even with working but not overwhelming majorities in Congress, will be able to do.  Most important, they get to set the agenda.  They get to decide what issues will be debated, what hearings will be held, what will be put to a vote, even when they may not have the votes to break Democrat opposition in the Senate.  It will be some relief that instead of the familiar series of proposals to curb liberties, raise taxes, or stifle economic growth and opportunity, the agenda will tend toward ideas of freedom and prosperity, though actual accomplishments will of necessity be modest against the strong opposition of the President and his media allies.  I will take modest improvements over the calamitous policy fails of the past several years.

Of Minorities and Society

The saddest chapters of history chronicle the breakdown of human society.  Rights are abused, the innocent—if innocence is allowed to exist—are trampled.  Poverty, hatred, violence, and uncontrolled human passion prevail.  Destruction and degradation, physical and moral, replace human progress.

All society, except that of master to slave, relies upon an element of free association.  Societies may have more or less elements of coercion as well, but it is the element of free association that allows the society to continue, that motivates its members to acquiesce in or even encourage the society’s continuation.  Free, voluntary association is what gives a society its legitimacy.  Without it, there is no society, just a group of people ruled by one coterie of thugs or another. 

Cooperation in society cannot be taken for granted.  When it is, when free cooperation, instead of being nurtured and encouraged, is replaced by coercive rules and compulsion, particularly rules and compulsion designed to benefit some at the expense of others, society declines, people interact more by will of others than by their own volition.  With time either the situation is redressed or the society disintegrates, often to be conquered from the outside when its internal strength has turned to weakness.

In its latter years imperial China was prey to numerous foreign incursions because its society was a mighty empty shell, old traditions surrounding an empire of competing warlords.  Ancient Greece, which twice when united proved too much for the Persian empire, became relatively easy prey to the Romans after the ties of Greek society had become tired and weak.  Rome, in its turn, after a thousand years, was enormously wealthy but mightily weak in the internal strength to repel the roaming barbarians, vibrant societies powerful in their own internal cohesion.  Much of Africa, Asia, and Latin America today remains mired in poverty from the inability of relatively young countries to develop cooperative societies that encourage the generation of wealth and its application to promote prosperity for the present and for the future.

With cooperation at the core of successful society, one would think that democracies must be the most successful.  History records otherwise.  There are no historical examples of a successful democracy, at least not one that lasted for long enough to matter.  Like a match set to paper, democracies flare up brightly into power and glory but all too soon die away to ashes. 

The problem with democracies has been that all too quickly the majority in the democracy learns that it can become wealthy by robbing the minority, under camouflage of statutes and government.  That only lasts until either the minority successfully rebels, becomes a majority in its turn, or the wealth of the minority is exhausted.  In reaction, the majority may seek to preserve its advantages by yielding to a dictator—a “mouth” for the majority—to govern in the name of the majority to discern and express its will.  Few of these dictators have resisted the temptation to wear the mask of the majority to govern for the benefit of themselves and their cronies.  That has been the case for every communist government, without exception.   

 

But, is it not right and just for the majority to prevail?  Perhaps, but to prevail over what?  Everything?  Consider:  if majority rule is applied to deprive the minority of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, why should the minority cooperate?  All that such society offers them is slavery, unrequited labor and service to fill another’s belly and pockets.  In a pure democracy, there is no check on majority avarice, no refuge for the minority.  The majority must always have its way.

Republics, however, are built upon a foundation of minority rights.  Republican governments are granted only limited powers, exercised by representatives of the people, within boundaries beyond which the government may not go.  A written constitution serves to enshrine and strengthen those rights against violation by the majority.  The system gives a stake to all—not just the current rulers—in the continuation and strengthening of the society.  No democracy, hereditary monarchy, or dictatorship can provide that.

In a nation as great and diverse as the United States everyone is part of a minority.  Whether we consider age, ethnic background, religion, geography, culture, profession, or a multitude of other distinctions, we are a host of minorities.  We can only come together and remain as a nation, strong and vibrant, if we are confident of protection in our minority rights, for protecting minority rights in America means protecting everyone’s rights.  That is why the Founders proposed and the nation embraced a Republic formed on a federal structure of divided and limited government.

In that context, what are we to make of the current direction of American society?  Are we preserving the Republic?  Does our society feel like it is coming together?  Recent public opinion polls find that more than 60% of Americans believe the nation to be going in the wrong direction.  In another poll, a mere 22% believe that the current government rules with the consent of the governed. 

What is the national political leadership doing about this?  We have a President who aggressively pursues a variety of programs that have in common the taking of wealth from one minority segment of the nation to reward others.  These wealth transfers are lionized for the undenied purpose of political and electoral advantage for the President and his supporters. 

You will recognize the pattern.  A crisis is discovered by the President, and an industry or group is demonized in public speeches and echoed in the establishment media as causing the problem and/or standing in the way of its solution.  A plan is announced that involves confiscations from the demonized industry or group to fund benefices bestowed on Administration favorites.

Consider a few examples of many.  Global warming is hailed as an imminent crisis with disastrous consequences; the coal, oil, and gas industries are identified as the foes of progress; and a variety of taxes and other restrictive policies are proposed, together with planned subsidies for businesses and companies favored by the White House.  Banks are declared to be the nefarious forces behind the recent recession, new laws and regulations are applied that confiscate billions of dollars from the industry, much of which is then channeled to hedge funds and other political allies of the administration.  Some millions of people are discovered to be without health insurance, doctors and the health insurance industry—among others—are fingered as being at the root of the problem, so a major overhaul of the entire structure of the health system is enacted that favors some at the expense of others.  Administration cronies receive lucrative contracts to develop and administer the new system.  There are many other examples, large and small, in education, welfare, housing, transportation, law enforcement, and many other government programs.

Is there any wonder that there is gridlock in the national government, when policy after policy is aimed at transferring wealth from some to reward others?  Where is the room for cooperation and compromise, when the issue is how much of your family’s wealth is to be taken and given to someone else?  The Roman Republic fell into gridlock after decades of appeals to mass acclaim for schemes of popular distribution of public plunder.  It ended in the triumph of the Caesars, and later their eventual fall to the barbarians.  It is perilous to abuse social comity. 

President Obama has announced the transfer of wealth to be the chief focus for the remaining three years of his administration.  Can our society weather that?

Of Dysfunction and Governing the Nation

It seems that no more evidence is needed. The establishment press, normally loath to criticize the federal government, has at last become even fond of proclaiming that “Washington is dysfunctional,” although they do so as if announcing something worthy of being “news.” The Senate has not passed a budget in some four years. The House of Representatives regularly passes budgets that the Senate will not even consider. The President—who has no budget-proposing role under the Constitution—proposes budgets that are routinely disregarded while declaring his intent to govern without the Congress. At the same time, people feel more alienated from their government than ever before, in ever increasing numbers considering the nation headed in the wrong direction, regardless of the party in control of national policy.

In the most recent demonstration of the Washington breakdown, the Congress this year failed to pass the annual appropriations bills before the current ones expired. Or, better said, the House passed appropriations bills, the Senate demurred, and the President announced that he would veto any appropriations legislation that offered either more or less than what he wanted.

The establishment press, amplifying executive branch efforts to promote panic and stampede the public, announced that “the government would shut down,” and yet 83% stayed open. Some prominent public operations (that do not require any appropriations to operate) were closed at the President’s bidding, like the Lincoln Memorial and the various veterans and war memorials, but the President seemed to have enough money to travel to various campaign-style rallies to complain about the government shut down. There was national confusion and consternation.

Perhaps what is news is that there is, at last, general agreement, and the President has helped demonstrate, that the federal government has become dysfunctional, by which we may mean, not doing what it needs to do. I also notice that this condition has not been getting any better. In addition to the recent, visible indicators, I would offer some longer-term measures.

Economic growth is depressed and has been declining for decades; employment is also down, with millions leaving the work force. Government welfare rolls have expanded dramatically, suggesting that a very large portion of the population is either not able to take care of itself or has surrendered its responsibility to do so. The federal balance sheet approaches ever closer to insolvency. To avoid being gloomy and doomy, I will not recount dismal education trends, eroding family formation patterns, the precarious condition of national infrastructure, or our worsening international relations (with allies and opponents).

Yet, the federal bureaucracies are far larger, taxes—visible and hidden—are higher, red tape has become ubiquitous, and federal subsidies have fallen behind promises even as they outdistance the ability of the federal government to pay for them. If government is the solution, then why is more government not making things better?

How could this happen? Have we as a nation lost our ability to govern ourselves? Have “partisan politics”—as though something new rather than part of our national intercourse since 1796—frozen the ability to consider, set, and follow national priorities? Have the problems of modernity exceeded the ability of policymakers to resolve them?

A case could probably be made for each and all of the above explanations. I think, however, that they are all symptoms of a more fundamental problem, one recognized long ago, at the founding of the nation.

As early as 1787 the Founders recognized that a central government would not work for the United States. Even with just the original 13 states and 3 million people, the nation was too vast to be governed in detail from one capital. That is why they created a federal system, under which the few, truly national concerns—such as national defense, trade, international relations, national standards of measures and sanctity of contracts, preservation of freedom and the rule of law, together with the means to fund these activities—would be handled by the national government. All else was reserved to the States.

Note that I did not say given to the States. Remember, the States and the people in them created the national government. The States and the people in them gave to the national government its authority and power.

Today, the United States stretches across a continent and reaches to the isles of the sea, with over 300 million inhabitants. It is even more impossible than ever to govern from a single capital, by a centralized government. We all have seen the evidence, in addition to the growing dysfunction of Washington. Everyday, people all over the nation struggle with rules made by the federal bureaucracies, rules that are often nonsensical where people live and work and play, rules governing the volume of water in our toilets, the content of our children's food, the gasoline in our cars, the content of our communications, the form of our financial affairs, and many other elements of daily, personal life. Even worse, they have become too vast and complex to be administered faithfully or complied with loyally.

We could fault the executive branch bureaucrats who make them or the Congressmen and Senators who write the laws, but these people are no smarter or dumber than the rest of us, and just as well meaning. They just have an impossible job. No one can know enough to run so many things from Washington.

Consider the big issues that seem to have Washington all tied up in knots—in turn afflicting all the rest of us. The new national healthcare systems are breaking down even as they get started. National rules for farmers have Congress stuck over who should get subsidies and who should not. National tax plans designed to take from some to give to others divide the people into winners and losers. Environmental regulations impose costs on some in order to subsidize someone else. National education programs follow each other in rapid succession, each with a new and high-sounding name, none of which do much to stem the continued decline in education. And ever present with all of these national rules are unintended consequences that were not and probably could not be foreseen but which crush people’s businesses, destroy jobs, and disrupt lives.

These are all issues that the Founders never intended for the national government, issues that if governments should address at all should be left to State and local governments, where decisions can be made closer to the people who have to live with the results.

We have at hand a better, competent government, or at least its blueprint. It is found in the structure of our Constitution that created a federal system. Our Constitution is the recognition that only through a system that keeps governing as local as possible can a great nation exist in union and harmony.

What we are seeing play out before our very eyes is that our nation not only should not be governed by a central authority, but that it cannot be. The sooner we recognize that and return to the federal plan of the Founders the happier, and the sooner Washington will be able to function as it should for the benefit of all rather than frustration for all. The task is too big otherwise and doomed to failure. It will not be a pleasant failure.

(First published October 27, 2013)

Of Global Poverty and Washington’s Struggles

It was tough getting out of Washington this evening.  You might suppose that with the partial shut down of the federal government, traffic in Washington would be on the light side.  I have not seen much evidence of it on the streets of the city or in the Washington suburbs.  I know that many, many people must be out of work, because the establishment media keep saying so, television and radio.

I do not refer, however, to experiencing the normal evening outbound Washington traffic.  Traffic was unusually heavy today, especially on 19^th Street, N.W., south of Pennsylvania Avenue.  The world financial diplomats are back in town to attend fancy parties in the cause of poverty.  For several blocks the lanes were clogged, nose to tail, with their black limousines.  The global party goers gather in D.C. each October two out of every three years (they take one year off to congregate somewhere else for variety).  The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund are holding their annual meetings as they have for going on 70 years.

Inching along 19^th Street, which is Main Street for the World Bank and the IMF (they have bought up nearly all of the Washington real estate between the White House complex and George Washington University), I was able to have a long, good study of a series of monster posters draping the north side of one of the World Bank office buildings, posters reaching no less than eight stories high, proclaiming the simple bold motto, “End Poverty.”  That is a good idea, probably the product of a high level committee of experts tasked with developing a theme for the Annual Meetings.  It conveys a sense of purpose.  The professional poverty bureaucrats have done little to end global poverty, but they have spent hundreds of billions of dollars to maintain it—at least judging by the results. 

In all fairness, perhaps the annual World Bank/IMF festivities help to fight poverty in the Capital Region.  Washington, D.C., and the Maryland and Virginia suburbs are already thriving from the Administration’s economic stimulus program.  They have some of the lowest unemployment rates in the nation, with the exception of the pockets where the energy fracking revolution is booming.  Nevertheless, at least for a while Washington is drawing money from the rest of the World as it does every day from the rest of the United States.

Focusing on ending poverty is a good idea, and there are ways to do it.  Undoubtedly, much of the discussion, however, in the IMF and World Bank meetings this week has focused on the budget and economic crisis in the United States.  “Dysfunctional” is surely a common word used in conversation by the visiting diplomats in the salons to describe the condition of the U.S. Government, since that is the label regularly applied by the establishment media talking heads, and it would resonate.  The vast majority of the financial officials attending come from nations where government is much more efficient.  Their economies may be dysfunctional, but their governments are models of efficiency.  What the big guy in the big office in the big house wants he gets. 

The American system is a lot messier.  The big guy in the room without corners in the big White House does not seem to be getting what he wants, at least not since the 2010 election.  After that election that put a majority of opposition Republicans in control of the House of Representatives and reelected them in 2012, he has declared his intention to govern without Congress. 

The last couple of weeks have brought home to the President that he cannot quite do without Congress.  Congress still has some role, albeit one greatly diminished from that extended to it by the Constitution.  It turns out that the “government shutdown” actually has shut down no more than 17% of Federal Government operations; 83% continues to pump along spending money with no attention by Congress needed. 

The chief executive is trying to magnify that 17% by making its absence as painful as possible, the rest of us the insect absorbing the sun’s rays under the focus of the glass in the President’s hand.  The executive hope is that public pressure will force the Congress to surrender what remains of its authority and agree to whatever the President demands, backing away from asserting any policy role of its own.  Just give the President a clean bill to keep doing what he has been doing, and move along.

Congress is not making that easy, passing bill after bill to open or ameliorate this or that hardship.  The President has rejected nearly every effort.  Of course, that is odd if you buy the rhetoric from the White House that the Congress has taken hostages.  Working with that metaphor, I know of no hostage examples where anyone having the interests of the hostages at heart would object to release of any one of them.  Who would send the released hostages back to their captors and say, “we will receive no freed hostages until you free them all”?  Yet that is the White House position.  Who is hurt by that?

You would not hear such questioning from the establishment media.  They are doing their best to hide the fact that what we are experiencing is a constitutional crisis, a battle that our Founders anticipated, which is why they created a structure of shared power that requires cooperation of all branches and domination by none.  The media are happy demeaning the struggle as a sporting event with winners and losers, and time clocks, and sports commentators, and favorite teams.

They miss the central point.  We cannot suffer to have any team “win”, and we are not spectators at a stadium.  Our freedom is at stake.  The design of the Constitution is that there can be little governing without all three branches being involved, the whole nation and its many parts represented.  Today we are engaged in a great struggle testing whether that structure of government, limited to prevent tyranny by either the President, the Congress, or the Courts, can endure.  So far it has.  The partial government shut down is the evidence.  Were that to end by either one branch or the other capitulating—rather than House, Senate, and President coming together—it is our freedom that would suffer.  There would remain much less check on the arbitrary and capricious actions of the victor.

Many of the elite financial diplomats at the World Bank/IMF meetings would understand that result and feel right at home.  American government, for 200 years a mystery to the rest of the world, would then become much more understandable and familiar to them.

Of American Exceptionalism and Our Chief Executive

Two colleagues and I recently had an Internet conversation.  The first brought up the question of American exceptionalism, wondering what it really was, in what it consisted.  Two of us responded with some ideas.  You may find the brief discussion interesting, as I did. 

I would note that this is a real discussion on a public forum.  While I have edited the segments down a bit, I have not inserted new material or changed any of the thoughts expressed.  I give only the first names of my two colleagues.  While this took place on a public forum, I did not ask them to repeat their comments here.

Neal:  American exceptionalism is demonstrated as American values and beliefs projected to the world with Washington, D.C. policies.  Therefore, American exceptionalism is arrogance. This is what I would believe if I allowed myself to accept conventional wisdom.  But I’m settled on understanding exceptionalism to mean that ordinary individuals doing extraordinary things, even beyond their own expectations.  And the reason why it is called “American exceptionalism” is because the country was founded on principles of liberty, freedom, and structures that were intended to defeat tyranny.  This was unique in the world and history at the time of the nation’s founding.

So I conclude that American exceptionalism is something that is not collective and is something that cannot be demonstrated by any policy that comes out of Washington, D.C.  American exceptionalism is something that can only be demonstrated by an individual.

I have trouble believing American exceptionalism was the deliberate intention of the Founders, because I see slavery in the Constitution.  How is it possible to reconcile the concept of American Exceptionalism with the tyranny of slavery?

Wayne Abernathy:  Neal, perceptive questions.  I think that when considering American Exceptionalism—and it is very real—you have to take modern Washington and collectivism out of the equation.  Our current collectivism, which is at the heart of much of what Washington does, is a throwback to what people came to America to escape. The basic idea of American Exceptionalism—which even preceded our independence and our constitution—was that this new land was a place where the worth of the individual, protected by the rule of law, prevailed.  While there were elements of those ideas in much of Europe, they struggled there against monarchy, class systems, and other means of imposing collective will on individuals.  The European ruling classes failed in their efforts to impose collectivist and class rules in North America, but they tried very hard.

I would dispute your point about slavery.  The U.S. Constitution did not create slavery.  It took the thirteen states and brought them as they were into a new foundational rule of law based upon individual liberty.  While slave states entered into that constitutional system and brought their slavery with them, they entered into a system that would not long tolerate slavery.  Before four score and seven years had elapsed most of the slave states recognized that if they stayed under the U.S. Constitution they would lose slavery through the operations of that Constitution, and they would lose it through peaceful means.  That is why they chose to try to leave the Union and defend slavery by force of arms.  The Constitution triumphed—or the people within that constitutional government did—and defeated both secession and the defense of slavery by force of arms.

All of those were elements of American exceptionalism. We risk American exceptionalism to the degree that we embrace the age old practices and policies of group rights, class structure, collectivism, and other policies that undermine individual liberty and the rule of law.

Honza:  As an immigrant, I always took American Exceptionalism to be what our first political generations meant it to be—the idea that we are not a collection of tribes or a particular trading depot that elbowed its way into nationhood so much as people united by a very specific set of ideas:  life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (including but not limited to property).

Contrast us to Saudi Arabia or any nation with an established faith, or even, arguably national countries like India or Germany, where group membership matters more than who one is.  That’s our genius, it’s why we perform, decade in and decade out, remarkably well compared to other places and why we’re always anxious, as we are now (thanks Wayne), that we’re becoming a nation where who one knows matters more than what one knows.

Neal:  Thank you guys for offering corrective perspectives on this wildly misunderstood idea of American Exceptionalism.  I first got interested when listening to Rush. I thought he was going to define it in a quick sentence, but there was a bunch of table setting.  But Rush gave us more establishment of context.  I was still not certain I had correctly grasped what he defined.  

A whole bunch of people use the phrase “American Exceptionalism” in a very wrong way, and I think it must require an individual effort to get yourself beyond the conventional wisdom meaning. We need somebody more eloquent than Obama to explain it to the American people.

Wayne Abernathy:  I don’t think that Obama believes in it.  He offers a lot of rhetoric—and policies—rooted in the idea that America is just like everywhere else, or where it isn’t it should be.  The United States was founded on the belief and vision that this was a place that could and should be different, that could break the patterns of oppression that had prevailed throughout history and all over the Old World.  By and large, the Founders succeeded, though it is a work in progress and is constantly challenged at home and abroad.

I think that it is that difference, that respect for the individual and for the rule of law, that makes us the target of ideologies of slavery, like the Islamists and the socialist tyrannies.  I am not sure that Obama recognizes that.

Neal:  Comparison to Saudi Arabia brings to mind a question I toyed with:  would the mundane act of a woman driving a car without fear of punishment be considered an example of American Exceptionalism?

Honza:  Neal, I think Wayne is correct. The Canadian rock band Rush (at first I thought you were talking about them rather than the radio host) is less likely to blame others’ poverty and repression on America’s prosperity and freedom than Obama is.  Obama hasn’t really thought about the idea of American exceptionalism, isn’t interested in it and just knows he’s against it without understanding it.

Of Financial Crisis and Hopes for Better

Sitting by the hearth on a Sunday afternoon, comfortable and cozy, while the winter winds blow, it is easy to ponder how the changing of the year has come to be a time for leaving behind the failings of the past and embracing hopes for better in the future.  I reflect upon the general healthy recognition at this time that happiness in the new year is to some important degree connected with our own personal performance.  Success is not so much the luck of what happens to us as the result of what we do, hence our natural determinations to resolve to do better in some way or another.

Within a few weeks—or even a few days—many of us overcome such thoughts, abandon our resolutions to do better, and settle back into familiar patterns, including the narcotic belief that what happens to us is largely a matter of fate and fortune and little related to our efforts and actions.  Successful people are seen as more “fortunate” than others, who somehow owe something to the “less fortunate,” especially if we consider ourselves among the “less fortunate.”  How else could rational people conjure up the palpably false claim that it is fair to demand and take the property of more successful people and give it to those who have done little or nothing to earn it, who in fact have in many ways squandered their wealth and opportunities for success?

Had we as a nation embraced the principle that what a man or woman earns is his or hers to use or keep or share as he or she wishes, we would have avoided the weeks-long political soap opera called “the fiscal cliff.”  The misleading story proffered by the institutional media is that our nation is on the edge of economic calamity because Congress—meaning by implication the Republicans in the Congress—is unwilling to do its job.  In fact, there are important fundamental principles at the heart of the disagreement between congressional Republicans and President Obama, namely whether cutting government spending—mostly government give away programs—should be postponed by raising taxes on the “wealthy” and independent businesses, and moreover whether raising any taxes on a weak economy makes economic sense.  There is a growing gap in views over these principles.  But for the national cult of coveting there would not be one, but there is, and sooner or later it will be too wide to bridge.

Without this disagreement, we would address excessive government spending the same way that families do.  Families that spend more than they earn will either borrow (within their means to support debt), reduce spending, or earn more, or some combination of these.  Our government has almost exclusively relied upon borrowing (beyond our ability to support it without foreign help), has increased its spending, and has “earned” less. 

On this last point, keep in mind that governments do not earn anything; people do.  Governments take what people earn.  Government policies over the years have reduced economic growth below the growth of government, inhibiting the ability of people to earn, which in turn undermines what our government can afford.  This trend has not been getting any better and has brought us to economic crisis.  A refocus on economic growth, not government growth, is what is needed, but there lies the disagreement in Washington.

In that context, I take advantage of the year-end season of better rationality—however brief—to propose that the bells we sound for the new year ring out the old and destructive coveting for the fruits of others’ labors and ring in the determination to improve our own condition by our own labors.  I propose that for you and for me and for our society as a whole we commit to rely more upon ourselves and to unleash our creative powers for growth and prosperity.  In the same way we will increase our ability and willingness to help others, but we will do so as a healthy exercise of our free will.  Government cannot be generous, for there is no generosity in distributing other people’s money.  But the individual people who make up society can and will open their hands to those around them, as Americans have more than any other people for more than two centuries.  More productive ourselves, we will have more means to share and better judgment about how to share it—ennobling to ourselves and to those we choose to aid.

Of Taxes and the Tenth Commandment

It may be a commonplace to comment on popular culture’s war on the Ten Commandments, but it merits the effort.  At best they are treated in Hollywood and other secular Zions of pop culture as the Ten Old Fashioned Ideas.  Undeniably, Moses was after all just another one of those old white men, whom many with public microphones wish would fade from the contemporary scene (as long as they keep paying the bills).

Yet there seems to linger in the hearts and minds of most people in America who are not cultural trend setters an enduring if vague respect for Ten Commandment concepts such as the preeminence of God, the duties to parents, abhorrence of murder, the value of marriage covenants, the evils of theft, and that telling the truth is still better than lying.  These are basic concepts that even children have little trouble understanding.

I must confess, however, that as a child I had difficulty understanding the tenth commandment, “Thou shalt not covet” (Exodus 20:17).  “Covet” is not a word much found in a child’s vocabulary, or in anyone else’s for that matter.  It required explaining to me.  Then it was not overly hard to take in as an idea.  I did wonder, though, why it had an exalted place with the other nine commandments.  The gravity of theft, murder, blasphemy, lying, not going to Church on Sunday, and even dishonoring parents I could sense as a child, but why make such a big deal about coveting?  Very bad things happen from breaking those other commandments.  Sure, coveting, as explained to me, led to other sins, such as stealing, murder, lying and the rest, but where was the great evil in the thing itself?  You could go to jail for breaking some of the other Ten Commandments, and you certainly were on the high road to hell if you did.  Coveting might make you feel unhappy or dislike someone who had something you wanted—not good, but was it really so bad?

I have come to learn, with time and experience, that the answer is, Yes, it is very bad.  The Ten Commandments address, first, our relationship with God; second, our relationship with family; and finally our relationship with our neighbors and in the communities where we live.  Coveting is a powerful corrosive acid in community relationships.  It dissolves kindness and respect and love for our fellows, leaving an envy that has hate at its root. 

Indulged in, coveting insidiously works to separate us from those who have what we might want.  One need not act on the coveting, one need not steal, lie, cheat, commit adultery, or engage in other offenses for the wedge of coveting to work its evil within society.  Neighbors become cold, businessmen and workers become self-centered, helping hands become harder to find, envy and jealousy increasingly push compassion and cooperation aside.  The poor hate any richer than they, and those who are better off lose their pity and concern for those whom they might otherwise be quick to help and encourage.

I am not one who looks to our political leaders to be moral leaders, but I do look to them to be virtuous.  Morality must be a fundamental qualification for those to whom we give authority to make, execute, and judge the laws if we want our laws and their administration to be based upon virtue.  We do not and should not derive our morality from these people, but we should expect them to act morally in the exercise of the duties and powers that they derive from the people whom they govern.

It is more than irresponsible, then, that coveting has not only been accepted by President Obama but is in fact advocated for the nation to embrace as the defining element of our economic policy, one that begins with demands for higher taxes on “the rich.”  This national call to covet is dangerous to our community.  Look again at how the evil was described on Mount Sinai, keeping in mind President Obama’s call to soak the rich to support more government:

Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour’s. (Exodus 20:17)

All sharing in the tax burden is a necessary element of self-government.  Self-government does not work without all of the individual selves in society pitching in fairly.  But how else than a call to covet can we understand President Obama’s “not negotiable” demand that the United States, on the brink of renewed recession and economic trouble for millions, do nothing unless the government first takes ever growing shares out of the pockets of those he calls “the rich”?  He wants their money, and he wants the rest of the nation to covet their money in support of his plans for bigger government. 

The demand cannot be explained on grounds of “fairness” or financial value.  One part of the population is singled out to pay for an outsized share of government spending, including promised subsidies to some of the rest.  The rich, for now defined by the President as those with incomes of $250,000 or more, currently earn 22% of all income but pay 45% of all federal income taxes.  No fairness in raising that share even higher.  But neither would Obama’s plans do much to pay for government budget deficits.  His so-called “Buffett Rule” would drink in some $47 billion more over the next ten years, or just under $5 billion a year.  The federal government, however, is currently spending $4 billion a day more than it collects.  That is, soaking the rich will pay for a little more than one day of the federal deficit.  Not a financial policy that will bridge the government budget gap.

What is going on here, other than a destructive and cynical effort to gain popularity by stirring up the many with envy of the income of a few?  This short-sighted strategy is working to undermine our national community, just as surely as Moses warned 4,000 years ago.  Already it has brought us to a month long national financial emergency, at the very time of Christmas when virtues of generosity, tolerance, kindness, and unity would better occupy the public attention.  The theme of peace on earth and goodwill to men is replaced by a manufactured national crisis over how to pitch class against class with sentiments of envy and hatred led by America’s chief executive.

By the way, I am not aware of any religion that condones coveting.  But even if the fear of God does not make you slow to covet, objective love for the nation as a whole and the integrity of the society should cause you to recoil from a political platform based upon feeding the fires of envy.

Of the American Revolution and the Counterrevolution

One of the comments that I have heard following this year’s national election is that it did not settle much.  Barack Obama was president before the election and he will now be president for another term.  The Democrats held a small majority in the Senate before the election, and they will have a small majority in the Senate afterwards.  The Republicans controlled the House of Representatives before the election, and they will control the House in the next Congress.

I acknowledge the point and the extent of its validity, but I am careful not to overvalue it.  This time was different, if not yet different enough. 

The reigning governing system is nearing its end.  Barack Obama and his companions embody in the 21^st Century the old wizening counterrevolution in America begun by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, now well into its senility.  The FDR counterrevolution has been the prevailing doctrine of governing in the United States since the (aptly named) Depression.  Even Republican presidents—with the exception to some degree of President Reagan—have governed within the terms and context of the FDR counter-American revolution, rarely taking issue with its basic theme of government as the ultimate source of solution to people's problems.

I like the analogy that Senator Phil Gramm used to offer in illustration of how Republicans get co-opted into the FDR approach.  Imagine, he would say, a great big piece of paper blown by the wind getting caught on the top of the dome of the U.S. Capitol, blocking out all sunlight below.  The typical solution from the Democrats would be to create an artificial sun inside of the dome to illuminate the room.  The typical Republican response has been to argue for a smaller artificial sun, one involving the private sector.  The real solution—seldom mentioned—is to remove the big piece of paper.

Today, the great piece of paper to be removed is the fundamental contradiction that lies at the heart of the FDR welfare state:  robbing Peter to pay for Paul’s votes.  For over 70 years Democrats and Republicans alike have been bidding against each other to gain Paul’s support, until the day is at last in sight when there will not be enough left to take from Peter to honor the promises to Paul.  The looming national fiscal crisis in over-promised Social Security, Medicare, and a host of government give-away programs is at last acknowledged by the public, even if its full import remains for most hard to grasp as real.  Still, more and more people suspect that all this has about played out.

Against much public vilification by the media propagandists, some are challenging the FDR counterrevolution, getting outside of the context of the tired debate that for decades characterized the contest between Democrats and Republicans.  They are explaining that government cannot create wealth, and redistributing wealth destroys it.  Defeating Barack Obama and his FDR policies this year would have been an important milestone, because more than any other recent president Obama fully embodied the FDR approach to governing, and more than any other presidency its abuses have been apparent.  At the same time, more than any time in the past 70 years political leaders and would-be political leaders have been challenging the FDR counterrevolution.  Mitt Romney chose one of those leaders, Paul Ryan, to be the Republican candidate for vice president.

In the event, we fell short, but we made progress.  As I said, this time was different.  To begin with, President Obama’s margin of victory was materially smaller than four years ago, 50%-48% of the vote in 2012, while in 2008 it was 53%-46%.  Similar narrowed margins were the pattern in the various states.  Moreover, notably few other Democrats were able to sail to electoral victory in Obama’s wake.  In 2008 along with President Obama 7 more Democrat Senators were elected and 20 more members of the House of Representatives.  Four years later it looks like Democrats will pick up only 2 Senate seats and 4 seats in the House.  In all respects, a very narrow victory.  Mitt Romney came close to being elected president, a point that media propagandists have been busily trying to bury in their efforts to make it feel like Obama won in a landslide with a mandate to continue on with his policies of impoverishment.

What the election has not changed are those policies.  President Obama’s economic program is just as much a failure today as it was before the election.  The vote on November 6 did not make it any better.  Neither have the problems changed, except that they continue to grow.  With each day, the federal deficit and federal debt deepen and America’s ability to manage that debt declines.  Each day brings us nearer to the day when we as a nation will be unable to pay that debt.  Economic performance as a nation remains weak and wobbly, while Administration apologists preach that weak is the new normal for the United States of America.

Governing will prove even more difficult for President Obama.  At least now he can truthfully blame the previous administration, the Obama first term administration.  He spent those years avoiding the most significant problems, pushing them off until after November 6, 2012, while creating new ones with his healthcare, regulatory, energy, and environmental policies.  The problems are a gathering storm.  There is not enough money left to run the welfare state, and the willingness of investors—foreign and domestic—to lend Uncle Sam money to pay for it is four years closer to an end. 

Foreign policy does not look very good either.  National weakness, economic or military, is provocative.  It encourages those who mean us harm.  Iran is heading toward crisis, without a comprehensible U.S. policy to deal with an unstable violent regime approaching the production stage of a nuclear arsenal.  The unanswered, mishandled, and covered up failures against the terrorist attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, will invite others.  With dread we await the realization of what President Obama meant when he told the Russians that he would have more “flexibility” after the election.

I acknowledge and applaud those who worked so hard to bring an end to a misrule that now will continue to inflict hardship on the nation and the people.  We came close to turning back the FDR counter-American Revolution in its naked manifestation.  We all need to keep on working for something a lot better, to restore the American revolution of 1776.  We are gaining ground.

Of Struggling Economies and Finishing the Job

The Obama Administration is having trouble keeping the economy down.  In spite of all the battering that the economy has taken from Obama policies, it keeps showing signs of life—weak, hesitant, surely not robust, but they are there, like the weak patient who wants to get out of bed and shuffle downstairs to sip some chicken soup.  Instead, the Administration, like some 18^th century doctor, wants to try some more blood letting to get the bad humours out of the system. 

People want to do things.  Businessmen have new ideas that they want to have a go at.  Men and women like to build, grow, and develop their lives.  No one needs to tell them to do it.  You just need to get out of the way.  The most productive, the most energetic, the most inspired, the hardest workers will do it best.  We can still remember when the economy was like that, when the news was full of new products, new ventures, new growth, and new jobs.  That is the light America shines to the world and what despots throughout the world hate about the American experiment.

President Obama came to power with a different vision for America, what he thought was a mandate to spread the wealth around, to take from those who succeeded the most in economic activity and growth and find ways in which he and his administration could give it to those who were less productive—or not even productive at all.  In other words, his plan was to tax success and reward failure.  So far, it has worked as designed, even if he has not yet finished with his efforts.  We are getting less of the success and more of the failure.

The trillion dollar “stimulus” plan was a good example.  President Obama and friends hit the economy with a special trillion dollars of new Washington spending that went to support cronies and fund new projects that soon added to the landscape littered with failed businesses.  The “stimulus” plan added to the deficit and became a seemingly permanent part of federal largesse, but it failed to add to the economy.  In fact, it made legitimate businesses compete for funds and customers against those who enjoyed government subsidies.  Hard to do.

The housing market makes up about a quarter of the economy, when you include people who build houses, furnish houses, maintain houses, and so forth.  That market was in full decline as the housing bubble burst in 2007 and kept deflating.  But eventually all the extra air comes out of economic bubbles (if you do not keep pumping new air into them), the crashing market reaches bottom and starts to recover.  The Obama Administration has made sure that it stayed on the bottom a long time.  Normal economic crashes and recoveries look like a “V” on a graph charting their progress.  The housing market under the Obama Administration looks like an “L”.  Note the tiny turn up at the end of the letter.  That is what the Administration’s friends would try to convince us is the recovery.  And they would like to divert our attention from the several thousand pages of new mortgage regulations that will go into effect in the next several months to whack the housing markets again.

Sure, mortgage rates are incredibly low, but that is not a healthy sign.  Have you tried getting a mortgage lately?  The paperwork, already a mountain, has become overwhelming.  And do you think that those rates would be so low if there were a real recovery in demand for houses and mortgages?  There is more (or less):  many people who qualify for mortgages today will have trouble qualifying in the future under the new rules.  The Obama Administration’s new consumer Bureau has been putting off those rules until after the election, but they are promising to issue them by the end of the month.

The summers of 2009, 2010, 2011, and even 2012 were each supposed to be the “Summer of Recovery” with the “green shoots” of new economic activity showing life each spring.  Yet each year those summers saw instead new economic setbacks as the green shoots wilted.  Sometimes the damage came from threats of new tax policies that would raise rates but give “tax breaks” to people who spent their income in ways approved by the Obama Administration and the tax code.

Businesses were threatened with new carbon taxes and other innovative and contorted ways to penalize any use of carbon dioxide, part of the air that we as humans produce with every breath.  Even a Congress with heavy majorities of legislators from President Obama’s own party choked on that idea.  Not to be deterred, the Obama Administration just imposed restrictions by fiat through the Environmental Protection Agency—all part of the war on carbon, which includes the energy industry as its victims.

The business climate remains in turmoil, as waves of new regulation and Obama campaign promises to bail out new favorites in the economy continue changing the rules and make business planning impossible.  Who would take a risk at trying something new when Obamacare and other employee regulations make it hard to know what the expense will be for new hires?  American businesses are sitting on somewhere between one and two trillion dollars in funds, waiting to know when it would be safe to invest them.  Employers are trying to put some of that cash to work, but they are being very cautious in doing so, not what the words “free enterprise” bring to mind.

The Obama Administration and its apologists call the recent unemployment report “good.”  The unemployment rate went up, above the level when President Obama came to office; 5 million people are long-term unemployed, up by 200,000 from the month before; and the economy has 4.4 million fewer jobs than at the peak of its last growing period before Obama took office.  The excitement apparently comes from the net increase of 171,000 jobs in the past month, above the experts’ predictions of 125,000.  Watchers have learned to lower their expectations for this administration, so that they greet with cheers any signs of life above their reduced standards.  Maybe for President Obama that continued anemic performance is good, but America can do better.  America has done better, much better.  We cannot afford to lower our vision. 

Our future and the future of our children and grandchildren must not be crippled by looking at 2% economic growth as being “good” or even acceptable.  If we want a better future for our children and grandchildren, in fact if people my age want a secure retirement, we need to get back to an America where 4% annual growth or better is the norm.  The social welfare state is expensive, not the least of which being the cost it exacts from the future to pay for the promises of today.

Fortunately, the economy still refuses to die, in spite of all the beating that it has received at the hands of the Obama Administration, but the economy is not well.  Let’s not give the Obama team another four years to try to finish it off.