America in Trouble

"America is in trouble."  So opened Hedrick Smith at the Union League Club luncheon in Chicago that I attended last month promoting his new book, Who Stole the American Dream?  "We're not facing decline.  We're already in it," proclaims Mark Steyn in his book After America.  Although these writers come to the same conclusion--America is rapidly sliding toward collapse, the similarity ends abruptly.  They ascribe very different causes to America's malaise and suggest starkly opposing paths to attempt to arrest our decline.

Hedrick Smith (who's literary achievements include The Russians and The Power Game) claims that we have become two Americas (echo John Edwards?). "We are today a sharply divided country-divided by power, money and ideology," he claims.  Smith dates the beginning of this schism to the Powell Memorandum, written in 1971 by Lewis Powell before he became a Supreme Court justice.  In it, Powell warned the business community that it was under attack by consumer advocates, taxes, government regulation and trade unions, and that it had better wake up and smell the coffee.  Hence began corporate lobbying in a big way.

Smith asserts that this lobbying effort ushered in a series of legislative changes that enabled a well-heeled plutocracy to tilt the tables, disempower the middle class and enrich itself at the expense of the vast majority of Americans, who struggled while their standard of living eroded (Smith could be thought of as an intellectual supporter of the Occupy movement, if such supporters exist).  He spins the narrative that expounds on the familiar villains of the Left: rich people that have too much legislative influence and thereby get themselves unwarranted "tax breaks" (notwithstanding that we have the most progressive tax code in the developed world), the bankers as the sole cause for the housing crisis, the high cost of imperial overstretch, rapacious CEO's plundering companies and shifting jobs overseas, and the rise of the Radical Right.  He dismisses global competition as overblown and does not consider the wage effect of hundreds of millions of Chinese and Indians on world labor markets.  There is no mention of government's role in the housing crisis.  Nor does he even mention the effect that teacher's unions have had on our abysmal education system.   Smith is a good writer, but I found his lack of balance astonishing.  It seemed to me primarily a tome of Obama talking points.  He concludes with a set of recommendations for the future that few could disagree with:  renew manufacturing, buy American, create a more efficient military, push innovation and science.  But he is silent about the corrosive effect of a growing government.

Not surprisingly, Mark Steyn also concludes that America is in trouble, but fingers an entirely different cause.  While Smith's posits that America's slide is caused by class warfare--the "rich cabal" grabbed the handle of government and drained wealth from the middle class, Steyn indicts the growth of the federal government.   The insatiable taxing and regulating nanny state have drained wealth and ambition from our nation. "America has been thoroughly unbalanced: thanks largely to distortions
driven by government, we have too much college, too much 'professional servicing'--accounting, lawyering, and other activities necessary to keep the fine print in compliance with the regulatory state.  All of these are huge obstacles to making productive use of even our non-borrowed money and to keeping America competitive with the rest of the world."  In Steyn's view, it is the bloat of government that is grinding America down--- the explosion of "entitlements," taxes, and the regulatory burden of the feds.  America's drive to innovate has been replaced by the higher value of multiculturalism.  He cites the downgrading of NASA as a prime example, as it recently killed manned space flight and substituted as part of its mission to recognize Muslim contributions to science. Huh?
"To boldly go where no diversity outreach consultant has gone before!," he intones, "What's 'foremost' for NASA is to make Muslims 'feel good' about their contributions to science.  Why, as recently as the early ninth century Muhammed al-Khwarizimi invented the first hoary quadrant!"

In  a previous generation, government did some good big things--putting a man on the moon, defeat Nazis, construct and interstate highway system.  Now, not so much.  "The bigger government gets, the less it actually does.  You think a guy like Obama is going to put up a new Hoover Dam (built during the Depression and two years ahead of schedule?).  No chance.  Today's Big Government crowd is more likely to put up a new regulatory agency to tell the Hoover Dam it's non-wheelchair accessible and has to close."

For Steyn, the demons aren't the rich, but the government class-- the faceless bureaucrats that regulate us, tax us, and force us to comply, often with rules and regulations that nobody actually voted on, but were promulgated by some 20 something lawyer in the bowels of the Department of Labor.

"Edwards was right about the "two Americas," but not about the division: in one America, those who subscribe to the ruling ideology can access a world of tenured security lubricated by government and without creating a dime of wealth for the overall economy; in the other America, millions of people go to work every day to try to support their families and build up businesses and improve themselves, and the harder they work, the more they're penalized to support the government class in all its privileges."

America is in trouble, I believe.  While Smith makes some valid points--China has become an economic threat due to its currency manipulation, its intellectual property piracy, and its product dumping--he completely misses many factors in our slide.  Globalization, our failed education system, and the ever intruding government.  Steyn is closer to reality. Each day, government makes hard work and risk taking less and less enjoyable and less and less rewarding, choking the vibrancy that made this nation great.

Pity the poor entrepreneur, slugging it out while a legion of regulators and taxing authorities torment him or her.  Pity the poor working stiff, hustling in a tough, boring job, making $45,000 a year, while his neighbor gets to stay home and enjoy a total benefits package worth almost as much.

It a few days, we will have an opportunity to choose whose thesis is correct.  If we vote for Obama, it will be Smith's and we will continue to policies of taking more from "the rich," downsizing our military, empowering unions and regulators, and growing government.  If we choose Romney, the results are less clear, but we will at least put a brake on hurling headlong into an ossified Euro-nanny state, drowning in its own debt and stuck in perpetual stagnation.

The Narrative

We are a little more than a week away from a historic election-- one in which we will choose between a European social democracy or a more free market oriented system.

This blog has been critical of President Obama, mainly for his disdain for business, the capitalist system, and individual liberty.  No statement by Obama encapsulates that more than his infamous, "You didn't build that."  He consistently derides wealth creation with comments like, "After a certain point, you've made enough money."

But even more distressing is his penchant for creating narratives that don't fit the facts.  He did this early on in his presidency when he jumped to the conclusion that the Cambridge police "acted stupidly" when they dealt with Henry Louis Gates.  Gates had a hissy fit while the police officer ascertained his identification when he tried to gain entrance to his own home.  Obama jumped to the conclusion that the Cambridge police were engaged in racial profiling when in fact they were simply following protocol.  Obama cooled the matter with his silly "beer summit," but the damage had been done.  Obama had invented a story.

Likewise, during the tragic shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, Obama ascribed its root causes to the vitriol of the political discourse.  The left wing media landed on this immediately and began to blame Sarah Palin for putting out ads with districts with bullseyes on them.  It turned out that the political discourse had nothing whatsoever to do with the shooting of Giffords.  It was simply a single mentally ill individual with no political motive.  Again, Obama takes facts and makes up a story to try to fit his agenda.

But now his yarn spinning has taken a deadly serious turn.  For weeks after the attack on our embassy in Libya, his administration tried to peddle the story that the murder of our ambassador and three other Americans was a consequence of a mob protesting an anti-Muslim film that got out of hand.  Susan Rice, Hillary Clinton, and Obama himself railed for weeks afterward that this film was disgusting and in concert, they clearly tried t o mislead the American people.  The facts now show that there was no "mob" and we knew early on that this was a terrorist attack.

Why did the administration falsely ascribe this attack to the film?  Because it fit the narrative.  The liberal script is that whenever there is aggression, it is America or Americans that are to blame.  It could not be that radical Islam is the aggressor.  We provoked them.  Is it any surprise that despite Obama's vows to bring the perpetrators to justice, the only person sitting in jail is the fool that made the film.

Taken together, these incidents tell us that Obama has a ready made view of the world that he attempts to mold facts to fit.   As we get closer to the election, I hope voters will taken these into account and decide that we want a commander in chief that deals with facts as they are, not as they would wish them to be.

The Questions I'd Like to Ask

Tomorrow night is the first debate between President Obama and Mitt Romney.  The press won't do it, but here are the four questions I'd like to ask the President.

1.  President Obama,  our country's credit was downgraded for the first time in its history.  Your own bipartisan commission developed a very credible plan to put us on a healthier fiscal path.  Yet you elected to kick it to the curb and focus on health care instead during your first term.  Please explain.

2. We now know that Operation Fast and Furious resulted in the deaths of one border agent and 16 Mexican youths, yet Eric Holder is still employed by your administration.  Similarly, we now know that the Benghazi attack was a planned terrorist attack, and that was known at the time Susan Rice continued to assert that the assault was a spontaneous uprising caused by the film "Innocence of Muslims," yet she is still employed by your administration.  In each case, please explain your rationale for keeping them in their current positions.

3. Mr. President, you issued an executive order stopping the deportation of illegal immigrants under certain conditions.  You also have assured defense contractors that they will not be subject to WARN Act penalties due to failure to give required 60 day notices arising out of sequestration.  Similarly, hundreds of organizations have been given waivers from Obamacare.  Does this administration intend to enforce some laws and not others?  If so, which laws are to be enforced and what is the basis for distinguishing?

4. In light of the intelligence failure in Libya, do you intend to revisit your policy of killing terrorists from the air instead of capturing and interrogating them, since it is difficult to obtain actionable intelligence from a smoking hole in the ground?

I'm sure I could come up with a few more, but I'd love to hear the answers to these.

Mitt's Bad Week

After a summer haitus, I’m back, just in time for the final grind to this most momentous election.  This has been a most unsettling time, one in which I believe that Western Civilization could hang in the balance.  We have a clear choice in front of us.  This election features Barack Obama, who, in many ways, represents the antithesis of all that is truly American—hostile to individualism, private enterprise, and American exceptionalism pitted against Mitt Romney—the embodiment of those ideals.   Crucially, the main stream media has picked its candidate and acts as an uncompensated PR arm of the Obama campaign, effectively multiplying  Obama’s fundraising.

It was almost with disbelief that I heard the MSM talk about Romney’s “bad week” last week because of the release of the surreptitiously obtained video in which he decried the 47% that are dependent on government and whose vote he will never get.  My reaction was—big deal.  Maybe he got the number a bit wrong—it’s probably more like 30%.  But the principle is correct.  The overarching strategy of the Democrats is to get as many people hooked on government largesse as possible to create a permanent coalition supporting the Democrats.

But it was Barack’s bad week, but we heard little about that.  It has really been Barack’s bad year.  Despite the stimulus, despite unprecedented help from the Federal Reserve Board, the economy is going nowhere.   Second quarter GDP was revised downward to 1.3%.  Durable goods orders are down.  Unemployment is stuck above 8%.  Family income is down.  Regulations promulgated by the EPA, Obamacare and Dodd-Frank suffocate our economy.   Our rank in economic  freedom and competitiveness has tumbled.  Millions of job seekers have lost hope.

Overseas, the picture isn’t any prettier.  Obama’s interventions in Egypt and Libya have enabled radical Islamism, and further imperiled our ally, Israel.  The Middle East has been in flames.   Our Afghan strategy is in disarray.   Japan and China are nearly at war.  The Middle East peace process is dead.  Iran’s centrifuges continue to hum, and each day, they unveil a new weapons system design to damage us while we are happily snipping away at our defense budget to make even more room for the Obama welfare state.    In the 2008 campaign, Obama pledged to meet with any of our adversaries without precondition.  In 2012, he will not extend the same courtesy to our friends, preferring time with Letterman, Jay-Z and Beyonce to our only steadfast ally in the Middle East.

Most egregious has been the patent falsehoods put forth by this administration concerning the rape and murder of our ambassador to Libya.  Blaming this horrendous incident on a kooky anti-Islamic film produced by an American citizen, the initial reaction was to decry the filmmaker and take him into custody for questioning about his alleged parole violations and to once again apologize to the Muslim world (for the free exercise of a private citizen’s First Amendment rights).    Now we are learning that Benghazi was a huge foreign policy and security blunder covered up by the Obama administration.

Both at home and abroad, Obama has been a disaster.  That Obama is polling ahead of Romney (or at best is dead even) is extremely troublesome to me.   I have deep worries about the America that my children and grandchildren will inherit if America renews Obama’s contract.

We're Not Europe

Despite the efforts of Barack Obama to drag us in that direction, we're not Europe.  Just a few weeks ago, France showed its character by responding to its fiscal woes by election socialist Francois Hollande, who promised nothing but more burdens on wealth creators and no adjustment to the lifestyles of the government elite.  Despite the organized efforts of the left to recall Scott Walker, the people of Wisconsin sent a strong message that common sense (note the title of the blog) will prevail in that state. Sure, there was a great deal of caterwauling about taking away workers rights but in the final analysis, states simply do not have the money to provide rich retirement packages that far outstrip anything that these people could obtain in the private sector.

And the people of Wisconsin have sent a message.

You see, part of being and American is working hard and sacrificing so the next generation has a shot at a better life.  It's in our DNA.

The European model is the opposite.   Screw the next generation.  We want ours now.

Stuart Varney (Fox Business) correctly observed that young people will lose opportunities and will be sacrificed because state and municipal governments are paying so much to retirees.  It's even worse than Varney asserts.  State universities are being strangled because of these overly generous pension obligations.  And state universities (and the junior college systems) are the key to opportunity for young people.

So the left wants to sacrifice the future to pay for the workforce of the past.  That's an inversion of the American ideal.  We sacrifice now so future generations can do better.

Wisconsin voters stepped up and said "enough is enough."  They figured out that it is fundamentally unfair to demand that private sector workers continue to work into their 60's and 70's so that public sector workers can be off fishing by their mid-50's.  In many state houses across the land, voters are waking up to the fiscal catastrophe that politicians have foisted on them through these bloated public sector pensions.  The math just doesn't work.

I predict that more and more states will wisely come to grips with this issue (California and Illinois being notable exceptions and will continue to drown in red ink while businesses flee those states).  Kudos to the people of Wisconsin.

Soul Mates

I was really worried about President Obama.   He seemed to have no real friends in the world.  One commentator picked that up and talked about how Bush had Blair and Reagan had Thatcher.  Clinton  had good personal relationships with many foreign leaders.  But President Obama was aloof and distant, and had almost none that shared his worldview.  In fact, promptly after entering office, he sent the bust of Winston Churchill back to Great Britain and recently declared us neutral in the Falklands dispute with Argentina.  With Israel, our other close ally, Obama publicly abandoned Netanyahu at dinner and, wagging his finger, told him to retreat back to his 1967 borders.  Our new friends in Eastern Europe, the Czechs and the Poles were treated to a midnight call telling them that the political capital they expended to become part of a missile defense system was for naught, because hitting the reset button with Russia was a higher priority.  None of our old friends or new friends seemed to hold the same values, values deep enough to forge a lasting partnership.

All that is better now as a result of the victory of Francois Hollande over Nicolas Sarkozy in France last week.  Mr. Hollande is vowing to "initiate a change in society in the long term" and explicitly tells the world that he "does not like the rich" and that "his real enemy is the world of finance."  He vows to reverse fiscal responsibility and instead push the accelerator on "growth creating spending."

Does all this have a familiary ring to it?  Of course it does.  Our enemy is not totalitarian regimes, terrorism or fundamentalist Islam (Eric Holder can't even utter the phrase).  It's the world of finance and the rich that threaten the West.

After 3 1/2 years adrift without any real close ties abroad, I see potential for a whole new Franco-American alliance, so badly damaged by the tension between George Bush and Dominique de Villepin over Iraq.  These two are blood brothers, soul mates.  I bet they can even complete each other's sentences. 

As Humphrey Bogart once famously proclaimed to another Frenchman, "Louie, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship."



A Critical Look At Ayn Rand

"Her popularity far outstrips her contributions." That was the upshot of the critical assessment of her work by Donald DeMarco, professor of philosophy at Holy Apostles College and Seminary at a luncheon presentation sponsored by the Lumen Christie Institute, the center for Catholic thought at The University of Chicago.

I continue to attempt to reconcile Catholicism and capitalism. William F. Buckley evidently was able to do so easily, but I have struggled with it at times. I had hoped that Mr. DeMarco's remarks would enlighten me. They didn't. In fact, there were several times during his presentation when I found myself wishing that I sat at the other end of the table so that I could debate him.

Mr. DeMarco was completely dismissive of Rand's thinking and writing, writing it off as "incomplete" and "cartoonish." He derided her black and white thinking and judgementalism. He was harshly critical of her personal life (she was unable to sustain personal relationships and died a lonely person). At one point, he compared her to Karl Marx, stating, "there are elements of Marx's thinking that has validity (without bothering to mention that, unlike Rand's philosophy of Objectivism, Marxism has been responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of people over the last century).

What I found most disappointing about Mr. DeMarco's critique was his inability to give Ms. Rand credit for any of her views whatsoever. Her popularity did not arise out of simply clever marketing; she remains popular because in a century in which totalitarians attempted to smash individual sovereignty, Ayn Rand picked up the banner and fought back. Her thinking is even more relevant today, as government once again is attempting to undercut individual liberty.

Today, we have a government that rails against the 1%, demonizes business leaders and entrepreneurs, and threatens to choke them off with a plethora of rules and regulations. Nearly half of our citizens pay no income taxes and continue to demand more and more of the producers. Ayn Rand is as relevant today as she was half a century ago.

Yes, Mr. DeMarco raises legitimate issues about her thinking. Ayn Rand could be doctrinaire, inflexible, and detached. Her personal life was, indeed a catastrophe as her black and white thinking doomed her relationships when they ran afoul of her limitations. She failed to grasp that an important part of life rests in mutually rewarding relationships and that philanthropy is an essential part of a civilized society.

But Ms. Rand celebrated the resourcefulness, energy, intelligence and contributions of the individual. In Soviet Russia, she saw first hand what tyrants could do in the name of the collective. To a certain degree, that struggle continues today.

Ironically, Mr. DeMarco dismissed Rand's work entirely, while condemning her because of her black and white thinking. Especially in our current climate, it would be wise not to simply dismiss Ayn Rand's continued popularity.