Euro-style socialism?

In his column today (02/27/09) Charles Krauthammer makes the case that Obama is intent upon moving the US toward European style social democracy. Indeed, with his stimulus bill now a done deal, Obama, in his first 30 days, has already pretty much succeded in that goal.
I for one think Krauthammer is being too generous in asserting that Obama's goal is mere Euro socialism. After all, Obama's earliest political mentor and guru was an avowed Marxist; he was a disciple of Saul Alinsky; his earliest Chigago poliitcal ally was terrorist and Marxist William Ayers. None of these factors sugest that Obama has much interest in the "democracy" part of Euro-style socialism.

In any event, let's grant for the sake of argument that Krauthammer is correct and that Obama aspires to merely be a two term European-style socialist leader. What hasn't been commented on is that Europe's 60 year fling with its current brand of governance has been made possible totally and exclusievkly as a result of six decades' worth of American security guarantees; in comparison to us, the Europeans have had to spend almost nothing on their own defense. They've been on a 60-year binge, in other words, largely at our expense.

Unless we intend to totally abandon our own military investment - and our global responsibilities - we will find pretty quickly that a socialist model is unsustainable here for strictly pragmatic reasons. After all, it was (at least in part) its need to match us in military spending that destroyed Sovient communism.

The Children Are Running the Kindergarten

It occurred to me over the past couple days that there is simply no adult supervision in Washington. Like children, the politicians blunder ahead, spending all the way, heedless and careless of any consequences. Everybody wants something. Gimme, gimme, gimme. And, of course, it is spoiled children who are being indulged. They want it to be free. Nobody thinks about how (or even whether) to pay for it all. It's other people's money!

However, adults must think of consequences. I am an adult. And I know where things end up when children are running the kindergarten. Just ask the inhabitants of Anthony Fremont's town.

Socialism: Parasite of Capitalism

If it weren't for the marvelous engine of capitalism, socialism could not exist. The grand experiment in Karl Marx's crackpot theories ended in 1991, though others crawl on in places like North Korea and Cuba. Like a parasite, socialism sucks the blood of the productive, capitalist system until there is nothing left to suck. In the process, millions of people suffer and die.

In the Soviet Union, with their vaunted collective farms, there were still individual plots for some of the collective-farm workers, the kolkhozniks. The communists levied "taxes in kind" on these plots; in other words, they confiscated the produce of the plots. The private plots produced a vastly disproportional amount of the country's production of a variety of staples. It took at least twenty kolkhozniks, working on the collective farm, to produce what four farmers in the United States produced. Productivity in other areas of the Soviet economy was not much better.

Now we embark on this already trodden path here in the United States, and we can't get there fast enough. A freakish mad scientist has put out bait for the parasites, and they have come scurrying by the millions. With their limited brains, they don't think about tomorrow or next month or next year. They don't think about children, about responsibility. They can think only of their next free meal and their next free benefit. This is their idea of "free-dom."

Whether these drones won an election or not, we have the right and responsibility to oppose them. The alternative is to become like the miserable serfs of the Soviet Union.

Hundreds show up to protest global warming!

Thoughts on a new march on Washington

In strategizing a proposed pro-constitution March on Washington, I think it would be important to embrace the sunny optimism of Ronald Reagan, always remembering that Ronaldus Maximus was no Pollyanna. He recognized evil for what it was and he called a spade a spade. But underpinning and informing everything he did was an optimism about the power of free men to better their condition.
Sure, people are po'd today, but the tonal approach to any March on Washington ought to be not anti-Obama, not anti-anything, but, in the spirit of Reagan, pro-America, pro-Constitution, and pro-people.

One thing the march can do is turn the tables on the leftist mantra of "power to the people." The fact is no political structure in the history of the world has unleashed the power of the people nearly as effectively as has the US Constitution. The Founding Fathers, in their wisdom - and humility - understood that each man knows what's best for him and his family. And more to the point, each man, for better or for worse, has a natural right to make the choices that determine the course of his life. The fruits of the Founders' vision are all around us: the most equitable distribution of wealth the world has ever seen. By contrast, the ash heap of history is riddled with the remains of societies where all the power was gathered in the state.

Capitalism is intrinsically altruisitc: you do something for me, I do something for you. I treat you right, treat you as a human being, provide you good value for what I offer you, and you return as a customer. I mistreat you, get too greedy and don't offer you good value, and I fail. Capitalism, in other words, fosters all the virtues. It is an exercise in giving, in fair play, in respecting the dignity of each person. Socialism, by contrast, fosters cynicism: it is a taking exercise, one that fosters a sense of entitlement, resentment, shoddiness [think of the phrase "good enough for government work"], and disrespect for the individual. (Nancy Pelosi expressed this last point quite explicitly: subsidizing contraception is a stimulus program because if we can reduce the number of people - those pesky, troublesome people - there'll be more plunder for the rest of us to divvy up.)

Capitalism, as empowered by the US Constitution, fosters hope, optimism, faith, and a relentless search for truth (to succeed in the marketplace, you need to know what's true, not what you wish were true). Socialism fosters despair (seeing all human transactions as zero-sum games), fear (what do we do if someone takes away our entitlements - see the hopeless and fearful response to Katrina by the residents of New Orleans, many of whom were wards of the state), cynicism (ve pretend to vork; dey pretend to pay us), and fantastical thinking (see any number of great leaps forweard, five-year plans, or the "stimulus" package, which is, after all, nothing more than Obama's first five year plan.

The March on Washington needs to make these points in an upbeat, optimistic way.

The Fairness Doctrine

A new battle cry...

Restore fairness to broadcasting:

end public subsidies to NPR.

How utterly brazen!

Yes, the Democrats won. Yes, they have the power. Yes, they can essentially do whatever they want. But they are so brazen. They say they want to end partisanship, yet no Republicans are allowed in the conference committee. They promise to set the final bill before public eyes 48 hours before the vote, then they reneg on the promise. They have decided what they want and, by God, they're going to have it, regardless what it takes to get it. And they do it all right before the cameras. Right in front of everyone. How utterly brazen they are!

Two things can be said about this remarkable legislative behavior. First, the Democrats have obviously learned from Bill Clinton that the public has a short memory. They know that they can flaunt their power and ignore public opinion, yet have total confidence that in a short while no one will remember (at least not enough will remember). Of course, the cover they get from the obsequious press corp helps to make this happen. Second, in a sense they are showing admirable leadership, which the Republicans could use a lesson in. These Democrats know what they want, have the power to do what they want, and are not about to let public opinion or the oppostion stop them. This is our Republic in action. No member of Congress is required to listen to his constituency. He is only required to exercise his best judgment in behalf of his constinuency (no matter how loony his judgment may be). Furthermore, we tend to admire those leaders who stay the course, even when the public is crying out for a new direction. The Republicans had power for six years and squandered it by reaching out and trying to bring the other side into the process. The Democrats are smart enough to know that in the end, it doesn't matter who seems to be magnanimous and who voted for which bills (a 61-39 vote is just as good as a 99-1 vote); it only matters that their agenda gets enacted into law. I hope the Republicans remember this down the road.

Back in the USSR

"Why don't you just fire the CEO's of those failed banks?" asks cub reporter Terry Moran of Premier Stalin, uh, I mean President Obama. Apparently Mr. Moran believes we are living in the USSR. I doubt if even Putin has the authority to fire a corporate CEO (have him imprisoned or murdered yes, but fire him no).

Republican Awakening?

I'm afraid I overestimated Obama, that I gave him too much credit. I thought he would arrive in D.C. like Lenin from exile, and ram through his socialist programs as fast as possible, the devil with Republicans. Instead, he delayed, seeking to sucker the Republicans into booking passage on his Titanic. And what do you know: the GOP balked. We have the spectacle of Susan Collins--Susan Collins!--arguing that the "stimulus" package is too expensive. What kind of crazy world is this? What happened to hope and change? Have Republicans, even RINOs like Collins, found their soul? Or have voters realized that the loons like Obama, Nancy "Five-hundred-million-Americans" Pelosi and "Barney Freak" are selling them and their children down the river? Or perhaps reality has hit the love-struck suckers who voted for Lord Barack Obama? I guess the only thing we can count on is that as long as we're dealing with human beings, it's hard to predict anything.

Articulate, bright, and clean

Can I be the first to say that the Republicans now have their own mainstream African-American who is "articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy."

"I'm sorry, so sorry."

Back in the early sixties, Brenda Lee sang a song that said, "I'm sorry, so sorry, that I was such a fool." In the past week we have heard similar "I'm sorries" from Timothy Geithner for "mistakenly" failing to pay taxes for four years and from Tom Daschle for a nearly identical offense. We have heard the same thing, in essence, from Senator Chris Dodd, who is suddenly willing to refinance his Countrywide VIP mortgages, even though he "did nothing wrong." And sadly, we have heard the same hollow-sounding "I'm sorry" from Olympic champ Michael Phelps for smoking dope. It wasn't so long ago that Douglas Ginsburg was rejected as a Supreme Court nominee because he admitted smoking marijuana and Bob Packwood was drummed out of the Senate for groping. These guys neglected to say they were sorry. It seems that in our generation, "I'm sorry" erases nearly all transgressions and makes everything alright. But I can't help but wonder if these characters are really saying, "I'm sorry, so sorry, that YOU are such a fool."