"The house we hope to build is not for my generation but for yours. It is your future that matters. And I hope that when you are my age, you will be able to say as I have been able to say: We lived in freedom. We lived lives that were a statement, not an apology."


Sunday, November 21, 2010

A Lease, Nothing More

So that the victors of election night do not commit the folly of misinterpreting their election to be something much more than it really is, it is best to keep in mind that an election is a lease, not a mortgage.

Thursday, November 18, 2010

Performance vs. Value

Following either the '02 or '03 MLB season there was a significant debate over whether Alex Rodriguez, then of the Texas Rangers, was the appropriate choice for MVP. His (steroid-inflated) statistics were astounding: forty to fifty home runs, well over one-hundred RBIs, and a healthy .300+ batting average. Offensively he was without a doubt the American League's most proficient player and a Gold Glove shortstop to boot.

These august numbers were nevertheless insufficient to elevate the Texas Rangers out of the AL West cellar in any season of A-Rod's tenure there. Those opposed to designating Rodriguez as AL MVP simply pointed to the name of the award – Most Valuable Player – and argued that the Rangers could have finished in last place with or without his massive production. A value-based award by its very name ought to go to a player whose team succeeded and could not have done so without that player's contributions. Not to a player whose production was rendered superfluous by his team's failure in the standings.

If I remember correctly, A-Rod's gaudy statistics won the day and he was honored at least once in Texas with the MVP award.

The impending announcement of the 2010 Cy Young winner has introduced a very similar argument. C.C. Sabathia of the New York Yankees won the most games in the American League this past season but was surpassed in every other major statistical category by Felix Hernandez, whose win total was held at thirteen by an historically porous offense that failed to score more than one run in over ten of his starts.

There are those who, as before, make a value-based argument. Sabathia won the most games for a team that made it all the way to the ALCS, this contention goes, and therefore his performance was much more meaningful and valuable to his team than Felix's performance. As opposed to winning more games in the pressure of a pennant race, Felix was simply pitching out the schedule for the second-worst team in baseball.

The rebuttal to this, which I subscribe to, is that the award at issue is not "Most Valuable Pitcher," it is the Cy Young award for the best pitcher in the American League. The honor is entirely performance-based and Felix out-performed Sabathia in every category except wins, the statistic most out of a starting pitcher's direct control. Sabathia did not win more games because he out-pitched Felix, he won more games because the offensive support he received was exponentially better. To designate C.C. Sabathia as the AL's Cy Young would be to give the award not to the player who pitched the best but to the player who pitched for the team with the best offense.

The best pitcher in the American League was Felix Hernandez.

Felix Hernandez is the American League Cy Young.

Sunday, November 14, 2010

Regulation's Additional Cost

Undoubtedly it is the case, yet scarcely remarked upon -- except by Adam Smith-- that the more plentiful state regulations are -- and the more invasive they are -- the more incentive there exists for affected parties to find any and all means available to shirk the burdens of those sanctions.

Herein is an additional cost upon the public. Not only are its resources being directly taxed by the arm of the state and its extended reach, but its actual treasury is being drained by the additional costs of enforcing taxation (direct or indirect) that the affected citizenry has increased interest to avoid.

The rule of thumb is simple: the more burdensome a cost-by-regulation is the more those touched by it will try to avoid it and the more the state will then have to expend enforcing it.

Saturday, November 13, 2010

The Modern Obelisk

In ancient times the monuments rulers constructed to mark their authority, legacy, and (ultimately) their vanity were actual monuments, notable in some combination for their size, architectural ingenuity, and ornate design. Think of Djedefre's pyramid, Trajan's column, Justinian's Hagia Sophia.

The commensurate constructions of today's rulers are not of such tangible stone, though every bit as large and lasting. The modern obelisks are massive social programs that are just as overwhelming, just as burdensome to the populace upon whose backs they are constructed, and just as permanent. Think in this turn of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, and now Barack Obama's health-care "reform."

The only real difference between the ancient and modern is that the latter is still taxing the resources of the public--and will be for quite sometime.

Monday, September 27, 2010

Liberalism as Contempt

Necessarily undergirding the policy aspirations of modern liberalism is a disbelief in the competency of people as individuals and in the aggregate to determine, promote and defend their own interests. Attendant to this is the conviction that government must step in and fill the void, accomplishing for people what they cannot accomplish for themselves. Without such benevolent intervention the individual and society are left helplessly at the mercy of larger impersonal forces like corporations, capitalism, poverty, racism, sexism, ignorance and all other manner of evil. Government and government alone must not only stand between these overwhelming forces and the people but gently (yet firmly) guide the people towards their best interests and full potential by adopting policies that will manipulate behavior and actions in a desired direction.

Liberalism and its disciples need not say as much – the sum of their causes and policies declares it for them.

To wit, liberals have long favored "fair lending" standards whereby lending entities would be essentially compelled to provide loans to people of lower incomes that would not otherwise qualify.

They have long been the champion of tighter federal regulation over American business, especially in times of economic anxiety like the present, lest American capitalism run amok and devour the many to the sole advantage of the few.

They have sought to save the environment and, by extension, civilization itself through the comprehensive governmental restriction of carbon emissions and through measures like federal fuel standards and expansive subsidies of "green energies." Breathlessly liberals will tell anyone who will listen (a declining number) that we are on the most extreme precipice of climatic disaster, dire warnings that have often been attended by computer-generated images of American cities halfway underwater.

To the extent the Left favors tax cuts to stimulate the economy it is in the form of tax "credits" that are provided if, and only if, a specific entity performs a governmentally-favored action; i.e. credits to businesses for hiring new employees and to individuals for trading in their old cars in for newer ones or for buying a home. Scarcely if ever does it cross their mind to give tax reductions to individuals and to businesses to do with that money as they see fit.

In the recently enacted health-care "reform," the federal government even goes so far as to mandate that individuals purchase health insurance for themselves.

Of course there is the litany of smaller measures liberals in all levels of government have enacted that further reinforce the image of the state as parent: seat-belt laws, anti-smoking laws, "sin taxes" and the like.

None of these projects in isolation, let alone taken as a whole, conveys a faith in the people to promote their own best interests. Instead the liberalism and liberals that favor and increasingly enact them place the preponderance of their faith – in deed, if not in word – in the dual capacity of the state as protector of the people and as the primary vehicle in manipulating behavior in desired directions. The determination and acquisition of the public good is possible only through a centralized state comprised of enlightened officials, an infinite number of czars and a bloated civil-service corps of over-compensated bureaucrats. The right decisions are not made in America's living rooms or at its kitchen tables but inside Washington's government office buildings.

This condescension has been coupled with an almost sneering contempt often expressed when liberalism's faithful attempt to implement the measures their fundamental views require, especially since the Obama-Reid-Pelosi axis assumed power in January of last year. In the three major initiatives since that time – the economic recovery package, cap-and-trade, and health-care "reform" – the powers that be have sought to enact into law measures nearly- to indisputably-opposed by the American people.

Health-care would be Exhibit A (and B, C, and D). From the very beginning of the debate a distinct and vociferous majority of Americans opposed Congress' and the President's proposals and gave voice to that opposition in town hall meetings, opinion polls, letters to the editor, and Tea Party rallies throughout the country.

Yet instead of being given pause by the boisterous vox populii, Washington's leading liberals doubled-down and forced through legislation on strictly party-line votes made possible by a series of corrupt bargains, most notably the "Louisiana Purchase" and the "Cornhusker Kickback." Previous promises of "the most ethical Congress in history" and a new age of transparency and post-partisanship became faint echoes when the leaders of Congress and the White House decided they would suffer nothing – not even the vocal non-consent of the governed – to slow down an agenda they had yearned for decades to enact.

Such arrogant disregard for popular opinion was compounded by assurances from the White House that Americans would grow less opposed to the reform once it passed. The attitude underlying such a belief was plain: whiny Americans would be given their medicine and, once down, would eventually tire of their tantrum and start to feel better once they realized the government was simply doing what was best for them. The nanny state knows best, in other words. It's the same type of reassurance children have heard from their parents for generations.

That Americans have not desisted in their tantrum post facto as had been assured has only caused the Left to persist in its contempt, with luminaries like Eugene Robinson complaining that Americans are "acting like a bunch of spoiled brats."

As obnoxious as this sneering haughtiness is, it can only be deemed to go hand in hand with the underlying worldview of modern liberalism. Examined logically, why would a political class as we have now bat an eyelash at popular objection to their policies when those policies reflect the conviction that the people are bereft of the ability to thrive without the advanced involvement of government – without, that is, those policies? If the people ultimately knew what was good for them and could attain it the liberal initiatives they object to would not be needed. A view that reduces people to de facto wards of the state has no more problem taking actions that confound the wishes of the people than a parent does making a complaining seven year old eat his broccoli. The dynamic between the two is identical.

Such is the state of modern liberalism that it is inherently an exercise in condescension and contempt. Those who determine the course of government believe exclusively in the government's (i.e. in their own) ability to determine and attain the public good. It is in this sense that we can fully and finally understand Barack Obama's declaration that, "We are the ones we've been waiting for."

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

The Buckley Calculus

The pertinent question before every political movement is how to best utilize the political process to effect the litany of policies it favors. William F. Buckley had a simple yet effective calculus towards this: the best way to enact conservative policies generally is to nominate and support the most conservative candidate electable in each specific race.

In the recent Republican primary for the U.S. Senate in Delaware the Republican/Tea Party movement failed to do this. The trend from this cycle to oust incumbents who have been amenable to the establishment ethos of Washington on behalf of novices who are inimical to it has been salutary.

Yet denying the nomination to Congressman Castle (undeniably someone amenable to the establishment) and awarding it to Mrs. O'Donnell (someone vociferously inimical to it) was a tactical mistake that threatens to make the Conservative/Tea Party agenda less attainable.

By any objective standard Mike Castle is no conservative; at best he will agree with conservatives half the time -- at best. This is Delaware however, one of the bluest states in the bluest of regions. Mike Castle is the best you can hope to get; he is the most conservative person that the voters of Delaware can be expected to elect to the U.S. Senate -- he is, in other words, the most conservative candidate electable.

The primary objective of conservatives at this time is to repeal the odious health-care bill that Americans cannot stand and that was passed through a series of corrupt bargains. Everything about that "reform" legislation stinks.

Whatever his disparities with conservatives are (and they are certainly many), Mike Castle was and is on record favoring the repeal of that law. For that repeal to be possible it will require at least 60 votes in the U.S. Senate, among other things. If elected as a Republican from Delaware (a Republican from Delaware!) he would have constituted one more vote towards that magic number.

In awarding the nomination to Mrs. O'Donnell though -- someone whose comparative conservatism to Congressman Castle is surpassed only by her comparative un-electability -- Conservative/Tea Party activists in Delaware have put themselves one vote farther away from achieving their foremost objective.

The savvy, if not completely obvious thing to do for the Conservative/Tea Party movement would have been to have nominated the candidate who disagrees with it half the time. In failing to do so they are now highly likely to be stuck with a senator who disagrees with them 99% percent of the time.

An over-developed demand for purity can be counterproductive to the cause -- sometimes the disciples of a cause cannot get out of their own way. Replacing incumbents like Sens. Bennett and Murkowski were not examples of this. Denying the nomination to Congressman Castle was.

Somewhere William F. Buckley is shaking his head.

Thursday, August 26, 2010

Weakness’ Invitation

If there is one thing President Obama made clear about his foreign policy when he took office is that it would be the antithesis of his predecessor’s. Convinced that the Bush Administration had gratuitously alienated America’s friends and antagonized our enemies for eight years, the president has pursued a clear policy of multilateral engagement with countries previously hostile to the United States.

The clearest iteration of this is the administration’s relations with the mullahs of Iran. Through a firm commitment to sustained dialogue on an even plane, the Obama administration has hoped to achieve a level of understanding between the two parties that will permit both to realize common interests and that will ultimately diffuse the threat of a nuclear Iran.

To that end, the administration has left no doubt as to their commitment to beginning and preserving dialogue with the mullahs. When thousands of Iranians took to the streets last spring protesting a fixed presidential election, President Obama went out of his way not to say anything that might be construed as sympathetic or supportive of the dissidents. Instead he called for moderation from both sides in diffusing a crisis that threatened to derail bilateral negotiations.

A few weeks later the president presided over a meeting of the UN Security Council and refused to divulge intelligence of a nuclear facility that Iran had been concealing for years. This revelation, as clear a sign as any of the regime’s malfeasance and duplicity, could have created momentum within the Council for stricter international sanctions. Indeed, it was what a handful of America’s allies on the council were calling for. Yet landing such a bombshell would have run the risk of derailing a round of discussions that the American administration had committed to. This was unacceptable to the president, who used the Council meeting instead to express his hopes for a nuclear free world generally while conspicuously ignoring the world’s most imminent nuclear problem specifically.

Unfortunately these painstaking efforts over the past year have all been for naught. Far from stepping back from their nuclear development, Iran has become even more emboldened going forward. Not only have they demurred at the basket of carrots offered to them to ship their nuclear material abroad, but late last year the regime brazenly announced that they were going to build a handful of new nuclear facilities, a massive embarrassment for the United States.

The conclusion brought home from this is that the failure of President Obama’s engagement initiative is as complete as it was predictable from the beginning. In believing that dialogue will lead to the United States and the mullah’s finding common ground, President Obama has assumed that there are interests common to both sides that can enable such a consensus.

This is a fallacy.

The President’s fundamental goal is a nuclear free world and by extension a more peaceful world. Iran’s unyielding interest is nothing of the sort. It is regional domination, which in its specific expression has invariably included the destruction of Israel. The means towards this end is a nuclear arsenal that will allow the Islamic Republic to throw its weight around in the region to an extent that other countries in that sphere cannot match or effectively check.

This obvious cross-purpose has led to a dynamic where the United States engages in dialogue for one purpose and Iran agrees to participate for another, as a play for time. The longer the mullahs can keep the United States (and by extension the international community) occupied in dialogue the more time they have to develop their nuclear program unencumbered. They are using the United States and our misplaced credulity to their own advantage, and given that the Obama administration has done nothing so far to hold Iran accountable for its steady malfeasance the mullahs can also rest assured that their ill-behavior will continue to go on without any negative consequences whatsoever. The message conveyed to them has not been one of American forbearance and equanimity, but of American timidity and spinelessness.

The danger in this weakness should be self-evident. Though the president has the laudable goal of a peaceful, nuclear-free world, the misguided manner in which he has pursued that goal has ironically made it less attainable. By unwittingly allowing the Iranian regime the time they need to culminate their nuclear designs, the future peace of the Middle East has become increasingly jeopardized, for a variety of reasons.

Unnerved by nuclear arms in the hands of Iran’s Shiite theocracy, the Sunni nations in the region will undoubtedly move to protect themselves and reinstate balance in the region by going nuclear. Should this happen American policy will not only have failed to fulfill its goal of reducing nuclear weapons but will have actually resulted in an exponential increase of nuclear arms in one of the world’s most volatile regions.

Additionally, the abject failure of the United States to implement an effective policy to prevent Iran from going nuclear will quite possibly lead to war. Israel, feeling existentially threatened by a regime that has contemplated its extermination and that now has the means to do so, will certainly execute a military strike on the country’s nuclear facilities. That such an act will result in an escalated war between the two countries is a distinct possibility, if not a complete inevitability.

Worst of all, at least from the perspective of the United States, a regime that has remorselessly sponsored terrorism against us and the civilized world will be in a position to provide its clients with the means to perpetrate a level of murder, carnage and terror that we have heretofore only contemplated in our worst nightmares.

These consequences are unacceptable, nay unconscionable. Yet they are precisely the guests America’s deliberate weakness has invited. The president’s policy of engagement has failed as it was condemned to do from the beginning. Going forward his and everyone else’s hopes for world peace and stability demand that his administration dramatically alter course, and that it do so immediately.

Futile engagement without any mechanisms to insure meaningful participation from the Iranian regime must end. The United States should instead begin engaging its allies, who have become increasingly bewildered at the administrations’ fecklessness. These are entities who do share common interests with us (preventing a nuclear Iran) and with whom we can plausibly hope to craft some kind of effective initiatives with. (For all the talk about how diplomacy is needed to find a solution to the crisis with Iran it is diplomacy that has been sorely lacking in and among the civilized world.)

Most importantly though, the mullahs must be disabused of the notion that they can continue to act wantonly without fear of consequence. If we want to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons we must first convince them that we will not only do something to prevent it, but that we will do anything and everything necessary to prevent it. As ugly a reality as this certainly is, the costs of doing what must be done pale in comparison to the costs of persisting in our current approach, which is to effectively acquiesce in Iran going nuclear.

Unless something is done quickly we will come to understand just how true this really is.

Wednesday, August 04, 2010

The Constitution & Representative Government Confounded

In recent years it has been the argument of the Left that the Constitution is in places indefinite in its meaning and that the courts must therefore assign a meaning where a self-evident one is absent. Along these lines, legal professor Sonja West writes that "eventually the law runs out and it is the justices [of the Supreme Court] who are tasked with filling in the missing parts."

This statement is astounding first and foremost because it confutes the text, framework, and over-arching logic of the Constitution. Where the law "runs out," so to speak, there is an absence of law. To fill that void necessarily constitutes the creation of law, a power expressly provided to the legislative branch by the Constitution in a host of explicit realms and to the states in all others. Article II and the 10th Amendment are quite clear on this.

The notion that the judiciary is to fill "in the missing parts" (create new law) is anathema to that framework, indeed it is a direct contradiction of it. As declared in the landmark case of Marbury v. Madison, the Constitution clearly iterates that it "is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is" (emphasis added), not to create law. It is the express province of the legislative, states and people to make law and the province of the federal judiciary to say what that law is, not create new law in itself.

Beyond this Professor West's conception of the judiciary's role flies straight into the face of the very idea of representative government. The declaration that it is up to the courts to create new law where there is none simply isn't reconcilable with the idea of a form of government in which laws are made by representatives who are selected by the popular consent of the citizenry. The people create the laws they are governed by through their designated representatives. The United States of America is no longer a government of, by, and for the people if it is not the people themselves, but what Lincoln dubbed "that eminent tribunal" that is "tasked with filling in the missing parts." Such a foreign conception of government flouts the will of the people and transforms them from their own rulers into the subjects of a robed oligarchy.

Saturday, July 31, 2010

Waking v. the Witching

Attendant to the all-encompassing shroud of night is the license to serenity and repose. A bedimmed periphery conduces one to focus their gaze inward and reflect upon themselves or upon whatever avocation best attains that salutary relaxation naturally sought after the labors of the day have ended.

More significant than this though is that the coming of vespers intrinsically empowers the individual, for under the shade of night one assumes an authority that the hours of the sun reserves exclusively for itself and the heavens. With the sanction of darkness it is left entirely to the wish and whim of each what radiance, if any, their surroundings appear in. From this perspective the individual is but a vulgar slave during the waking hours and an absolute sovereign during the witching.

Frightfully though if one accepts that humankind is permeated by corruption in its most basic nature, the advanced license of the dark of night can only be understood to necessarily be a sanction to perpetrate that corruption. Why else would the hours of the sun's absence be labeled, among other things, as "the witching hours"? When the sun is shining all is laid bare by the heavens; under the cloak of darkness the depravity of mankind has immunity to do evil and to enshroud that evil as much as it desires.

In the obscurity of the shadows the witches doth rein.

Under this principle it becomes self-evident why the Judeo-Christian tradition has so often equated God with light in its teachings. Under the guise of darkness human evil is empowered and so the evils of the temporal easily become equated with darkness. By the light that is God that darkness is extinguished and the way to salvation is illuminated.

Evil is darkness, God is the light and the light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it.

Saturday, July 24, 2010

The Premise of Christ & Eternal Sin

In Mark 3:28-29, Jesus declares that "all sins will be forgiven the children of man, and whatever blasphemies they utter, but whoever blasphemies against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin."

Martin Luther elaborates upon this, asserting that, "Whoever despairs in his sin or relies on good works sins against the Holy Spirit and against grace."

Theologically this coheres perfectly with what is written in John 3:16-19, the cornerstone article of scripture to the Christian Faith:

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment…

The import of this is clear: Christ was sent from God for the sole purpose of saving mankind. Whoever believes in Christ is saved – they will not perish but have eternal life. That Christ was sent to save necessarily implies that Christ was needed to save mankind and that therefore only through believing in Christ as one's savior is grace and salvation possible. According to the Christian faith, to deny this is to deny the entire point of Christ and is therefore to deny Christ himself.

One does this when they believe that they can do for themselves – save themselves through their own works – what Christ was sent to do and what, a fortiori, Christ was needed to do. Through such an individual commission one elevates their self above Christ, declaring through their beliefs if not through their words that they can save themselves by their own deeds, no Christ needed. After all, one who holds in their conscience that they can save themselves by themselves necessarily denies that they need a savior and, ergo, simultaneously declares that Christ is not their savior. The only purpose for which Christ was sent is thus refuted and so Christ himself is thus refuted. Once this is done scripture is absolutely clear: he that "has not believed in the name of the only Son of God" is condemned.

What else could be the "eternal sin"? Christianity holds nothing else if it does not hold that to accept Christ – and to not deny Christ – each individual must accept that the only thing they can do is to accede to the reality that there is nothing they can do. It must be done – and is done – through the sacrificial grace of Christ.

Review: A Short History of Byzantium

A Short History of Byzantium by John Julius Norwich

The deep and comprehensive knowledge Norwich has of Byzantium -- borne out in the three volume history he has written on the topic -- is only confirmed with this abridgement. If one is looking for a comprehensive yet brief history of the world's longest standing Christian empire this book is ideal.

With that said, I experienced a considerable level of frustration while reading this. In order to condense three volumes into one Norwich had to sacrifice much of his own personal analysis of the history being covered for the history itself. The upshot is an often dry and unyielding catalogue of names, dates and geographic locations buttressed by a sentence or -- at most -- a paragraph of Norwich's provocative commentary. For this reason I can hardly wait to delve into the complete three volume version. Norwich's deep understanding of Byzantium adds a considerable level of gravity to his opinions and to his ultimate assessment of the Byzantines.

Monday, July 12, 2010

Review: Lost to the West

Lost to the West by Lars Brownworth

Brownworth at least proves the thesis of this brief history: the Byzantine Empire did, in fact, hold the line for the West for nearly a millennium. Not only did it preserve the classics of Greece and Rome lost to the West in the centuries that elapsed between the fall of Rome and the Renaissance, but it also – just as, if not more, importantly – managed to prevent the soldiers of Mohammed from swarming west and devouring a fractured, sub-developed Europe. "The great walls of Constantine's city…delayed the Muslim advance into Europe for eight hundred years," Brownworth points out, "allowing the West the time it needed to develop" (p. 302).

This is all that can be fairly said for it though. The annals of Byzantium offer very little distinct from the late Western Roman Empire. Both were plagued by ceaseless cycles of political, economic and social instability. With an admittedly fair share of exceptions, an individual would usurp the crown of the basileus, murder/blind/tonsure him and any other potential rivals, and then, sooner or later, suffer the indignity of a similar fate himself.

Beyond that which it preserved from the Ancient Greeks and Romans it is a struggle to come up with anything distinctive of the Byzantines' that would serve to guide and inspire posterity. When the minds of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment looked back it was to the Classical Age, not to the Byzantines, that they found something worthy.

The Byzantines' contribution was to ensure that the fruits of the Classical Age were still there. Byzantium essentially served as a bridge between that epoch and the modern one to which we today are a part. Without them not only would our earliest heritage have been (in keeping with the spirit of this history's title) completely lost to us but the West itself would have fallen beneath the conquering sword of Islam.

No Byzantium, no Western Civilization.

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

The Spending Freeze

One thing lost in all the reaction to news that President Obama will propose a spending freeze tomorrow night is the real question whether he will do anything meaningful to see it enacted. His modus operandi to date has been to allow congressional leaders complete autonomy in formulating and passing their favored legislation. Pelosi, Reid and others in the Democratic leadership have been the ones doing the work on the "stimulus," cap and trade, and now health care while the president has sat on the sideline doing little more than giving speeches and campaigning around the country on their behalf.

Why then is anyone to actually believe that President Obama will stand up to Congressional Democratic leaders and pressure them to enact and follow something that is inimical to their perpetual rush to expand the size, scope and reach of the federal government?

Given his record, there is absolutely no reason to believe this. Quite to the contrary, the only realistic expectation is that the spending freeze will be a nice proposal met with ringing applause that will be immediately forgotten as soon as he gets into his limousine and rides his motorcade back to the White House.

The president simply has no will or desire to compel liberals in Congress to do something they do not want to do. He never has.

Liberal vs. Conservative Populism

President Obama's response to the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United last week helpfully illuminates the distinction between the brands of populism practiced by the Left and Right. (Actually you could even say it illuminates the fundamental difference between Liberal and Conservative in how they view the relationship between citizen and government.)

The President:

With its ruling today, the Supreme Court has given a green light to a new stampede of special interest money in our politics.  It is a major victory for big oil, Wall Street banks, health insurance companies and the other powerful interests that marshal their power every day in Washington to drown out the voices of everyday Americans.  This ruling gives the special interests and their lobbyists even more power in Washington--while undermining the influence of average Americans who make small contributions to support their preferred candidates.  That's why I am instructing my Administration to get to work immediately with Congress on this issue.  We are going to talk with bipartisan Congressional leaders to develop a forceful response to this decision.  The public interest requires nothing less.

Liberal populism (like its conservative counterpart) decries the vulnerability of the people and finds the necessary remedy (unlike its conservative counterpart) in government action to protect the people from predators such as big business, insurance companies, poverty, etc. It is expressed in a way that envisions individuals and society as intrinsically and at all times vulnerable and thus forever in need of protection from a paternal government. Without government intervention and regulation society is left to the mercy of nefarious and usually faceless forces, with individual's being constantly exploited and their "positive liberty" denied.

This explains President Obama's negative reaction to the Court's decision. Without the federal government limiting the ability of corporations and other powerful interests to buy ad time in the media around election time, the votes of the people will be compromised by big money. This is the same rationale that underwrites so many hallmarks of contemporary government such as the minimum wage, affirmative action, seat-belt laws, and the proposed individual mandate in health care. Government is indispensably necessary to protect the individual in everything.

Conservative populism is the opposite. While its expression also bemoans the vulnerability of the people it sees the source of that vulnerability to be an extravagant and overweening government. This is the ascendant form of populism in America today, built upon resistance to a federal government that is spending billions upon billions of borrowed dollars and that is trying to force through a radical health-care bill that will dramatically alter the relationship between citizen and government. Adding to this popular ire is the fact that Congress is formulating this "reform" on a strictly partisan basis behind closed doors and that congressional leaders are using special favors and buyoffs directed to swing congressmen and senators to pass it on strictly party-line votes.

As is the case here, conservative populism is a reaction against a distant, over-bearing government out of touch with the people. It is the large and ever-growing Tea Party movement, a mass antagonist to the exact same paternal government – the nanny state – that liberals believe is necessary to protect the people. The major thing conservative populism believes that individuals and society must be protected from is government itself, especially a government that seeks to inject itself into every facet of individual and civic life.

This is what Ronald Reagan succinctly expressed when he declared in the previous era of ascendant conservative populism that "government isn't the solution to the problem, it is the problem."

This is the clear distinction between liberal and conservative populism. The former believes the people need protection from their government in everything. The latter simply believes the people need protection from their own government.

Saturday, January 16, 2010

Listen to Yourselves

Democrats in Washington have sought to demonstrate their bona fides with regular Americans over the past year (as they have simultaneously showed contempt for them in their health-care drive) through railing against the greed and avarice of the nation's banks. Trying to capitalize on Americans' increasing economic frustration, such luminaries of our country's ruling party as President Barack Obama and Rep. Barney Frank have suggested new taxes on the banks in light of news that more bonuses will be enriching the pockets of many a banking executive.

In the historical pantheon of political demagoguery this iteration is fairly feeble. What it does demonstrate though is the cognitive dissonance that has plagued Washington Democrats in almost all of their ventures since they assumed complete power one year ago. It should not take the critical thinking skills of much more than a high school freshman to figure out that what is being inveighed against implicitly condemns what is being proposed.

Think about it: if America's banks and bank executives are really as greedy and immune to the broader public interest as those at the highest levels of elected government say they are, then why in the world would you tax them? A greedy entity concerned solely with its own profit will not absorb the increased costs incurred by these taxes. They will not pay an extra dime.

Instead the increased costs will be passed down to the bottom of the chain, in the form of increased fees on regular Americans. This is true of any increased costs, whether through direct taxation or regulation, that Washington has and will try to levy on the higher institutions of the American economy. It is the American consumer most affected, not the fat cat sitting in a leather chair with a Christmas bonus in his pocket.

Should the president and Rep. Frank have their way, the long arm of the government will simply reach deeper into the pockets of all Americans, albeit in an indirect way.

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Affordability, Not Access

Of all the flaws present in the president's and Congressional Democrats' approach to health-care reform, one of the more fundamental ones is the avenue through which they have approached it, which has been as a matter of access. Constantly citing the millions of Americans currently without health insurance, they propose decreasing that number through a "public option" in which the federal government will provide health-insurance and/or through an individual mandate that will compel Americans to buy a specific kind of policy or pay a fine.

The problem with addressing access in this direct manner is that it will lead to a myriad of problems like government rationing, higher insurance premiums, exacerbation of an already exploding national debt and, most worrisome, diminished individual freedom.

President Obama and Congressional Democrats ought to alter course. Instead of trying to remedy the problem of access to health-care through the federal government they should attack health care's growing un-affordability. The advantage of doing this is that it will reduce the costs of health-insurance for those who already have it while also indirectly addressing the problem of accessibility. The reason for this is that cheaper health-insurance is health-insurance that is open to a greater number of Americans.

Two obvious solutions stand out.

One is to strike down the legal restriction that prevents individuals from buying health insurance policies across state lines. Doing so will give relief to people who live in states with high insurance premiums by empowering them to shop across the nation for more affordable alternatives. This will also create an increased atmosphere of competition that will in turn exert downward pressure on medical insurance costs everywhere.

The second solution is to enact long overdue tort reform. Putting an end to outrageous rewards in medical malpractice cases will immediately begin to decrease the price of insurance and medical care by simultaneously decreasing the liability insurance that physicians are being forced to pay under the present system. Right now doctors are either priced out of their practice or are compelled to pass their liability costs on to everyone else through higher fees.

The advantage of these two reforms is that neither will require exponential increases in federal spending or the creation of dozens of new governmental boards, commissions, and bureaucracies. What they will do is lower the costs of health-insurance and thus make it available to the millions of Americans who cannot currently afford it.

Accordingly, if giving every American access to health insurance is the national and moral imperative Washington Democrats declare that it is than they must waste no time in adopting these reforms. The reality presented by their current proposals – which all amount to a stunning increase in the size and reach of the federal government – promise only to make health-care more accessible in theory, not in actuality.

Only by attacking the rising costs of medical care will the president and Congress accomplish what they have set out to do and make quality, affordable health-care accessible to all Americans.