A Future of Growth or Government?

The Left snickers now that while the public favors spending restraint in the abstract it abhors (and will abhor Republican) reductions in the specific. President Obama is staking his re-election on this – that voters will recoil from the GOP and turn back towards him when Congress tries to do something it has not done in generations: pass a budget smaller than the previous one.

That may be. Existential spending cuts may very well cost Republicans (and the republic) another long term of Obama, possibly their House majority.

But that does not change the substantive reality that the ruinous course for us and especially the next generation of Americans is to do what President Obama and the Left propose: nothing. For decades we have indulged ourselves not with our own money but with that of our children and grandchildren. Now we face the upshot of that irresponsibility, that generational theft.

It presents us with a choice. One is to select a future of growth and prosperity, a choice that entails the shared sacrifice of spending cuts and entitlement reform that will permit tax levels to remain low, alter the incentives in the health-care industry to improve its pricing and provision, and free future Americans from what Jefferson once called "the dead hand of the past."

The other is to do nothing, to sullenly limp towards a future suffocated by a ubiquity of red. Debt levels approaching GDP will necessitate even more exponential growth in government as Uncle Sam has no other recourse but to completely grab onto the billfolds and checkbooks of Americans. The need for such an overweening state will choke out even the faintest hope of economic growth and bring us closer, if not in lockstep, with the stifled economies of Europe. Having stuck our children with the tab, we will have also ungraciously denied them the means to pick it up.

Hoping only for political gains in the next election, this is the option President Obama and his party of unions and special interest payouts have selected. For those who seek another course, "have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it."

Stasis in Wisconsin

Those forces in Wisconsin opposing the governor's budget reducing proposals ought to answer a simple question: why is compensation greater than what those with comparable employment in the private sector receive sancrosanct when the state cannot afford that excessive compensation and it is paid on the backs of Wisconsin taxpayers?

This is simply an exercise in an entitled class of people fighting to preserve their preferential, market-immune sinecures.

Point, Counterpoint

Leadership having been abdicated by the president, House Republicans have indicated that they will include entitlement reforms in their forthcoming budget proposal. Whatever shape these reforms take, Democrats will scream that the GOP is gutting Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and that unquantifiable suffering by the American people will ensue.

The counter to this is simple: the unquantifiable suffering will only occur should Republicans adopt the Democrats' position of cowardice and inaction. These programs cannot meet their long-term obligations. Left alone massive increases in taxes or austerity cuts will be inevitable. Comprehensive reform as Republicans propose is the only manner through which these entitlements can be made viable into the future. This is plain and simple – the conclusion of the president's own debt commission.

Through sheer inaction, Democrats simply plan to watch the entitlement car drive straight off of the cliff.

Obama, Condemned

Charles Krauthammer pens a devastating condemnation of President Obama's abdication on the debt crisis, managing, in a mere collection of paragraphs, to illuminate the manifold problems with his budget.

If accepted on its own terms, the budget fails to trim discretionary spending in any meaningful sense. The $1.1 trillion in savings it claims to instill would not be enough to balance the budget this year, let alone the federal government's long-term structural deficit.

The preponderance of spending "reduction" it does contain consists mostly in tax increases, abolishing many tax loopholes in the corporate tax-code while leaving the rate itself alone. The actual spending reductions it does contain barely set spending back to the baselines he inherited in 2009. "Classic Obama debt reduction: Add $2 trillion in new taxes, then add another $1 trillion in new spending and, presto, you've got $1 trillion of debt reduction."

All of this ignores the fact that the foundation upon which this budget plan is built are absurdly, shall we say optimistic economic-growth predictions coupled with cheap accounting gimmicks. When these are swept away, as they will be, the president's budgetary proposals would lead to additional federal outlays of nearly $1 trillion per annum.

President Obama's most egregious transgression is not one of commission but omission: he completely ignores the major debt-creating monster – the self-indulgent largesse of current and previous generations that is entitlements. For the federal fiscal house to be put back in order these unsustainable leviathans will need to be reformed or they will utterly fail to meet their obligations.

Cognizant of this, the president has nevertheless refused to do anything. On the single largest challenge that menaces his country at the time he is its president, he has shirked leadership in a cynical political ploy to force the opposition to fill the void – fully intending to attack as soon as they put one toe out on the branch. "A more cynical budget is hard to imagine. This one ignores the looming debt crisis, shifts all responsibility for serious budget-cutting to the Republicans — for which Democrats are ready with a two-year, full-artillery demagogic assault — and sets Obama up perfectly for re-election in 2012."

As a cruel mockery of his newest slogan, President Obama is forfeiting America's future for his own political advantage.

To Demure & Bequeath

Since his State of the Union address the president has been fond of talking about "winning the future" by revving the engine of government to invest in all facets of the country. Such rhetoric willfully ignores the reality that the combination of increased outlays from his first biennium coupled with desperately insolvent entitlements promise a future consumed by debt. Far from "winning the future," further government "investment" akin to what the president is calling for promises to steal the future from present and successive generations.

As our cumulative national debt approaches GDP levels, action – both drastic and immediate – is required.

The president pays some lip service to this but is derelict in deed. Before Congress last month, he refused to acknowledge the issue (and the reason that dozens of new members from the other party were sitting in his audience) and called for billions more in new spending on light-speed rail and other sundries.

His budget, released today, does not cut even half of what Republicans are proposing and does virtually nothing to ameliorate the red ink crisis. As Fred Barnes points out, the president's budget would cut $1.1 trillion over the next decade – a sum that does not even exceed the projected deficit for this year.

President Obama and his apologists came into office fancying him as the next FDR: the long-awaited heir who would create a social welfare system for the twenty-first century. This is clearly the presidency he and they still envision.

It is not the presidency that history, or what Machiavelli called fortuna, has designed for him.

The defining issue of this political generation is debt, the single matter that we cannot shirk without being entirely consumed in a sea of insolvency. For other generations it was slavery and civil war, Nazism or communism. Debt is ours.

The president refuses to either recognize or accept this, and so he demurs, creating a leadership void others will be compelled to fill. Only by that time the problem will be even greater than it is now. As Noemie Emery writes, "The mess he claims he inherited from President George W. Bush (which was made in large part by Obama's friends and his party) will be as nothing compared to the one he'll pass on to his heirs."

A long snake of debt – made of zero after zero – ready to squeeze and suffocate present and future generations: such is the bequest the president will leave for his successors.

Kidnapped Conservatives

It was another harmless day in 8^th grade U.S. History when my teacher dropped the bomb. "Yes Lincoln was the first Republican president, but it is pretty obvious that were he alive today he'd be a Democrat." Dumbfounded, this was my first experience with an odious phenomenon: when a conservative is dead and buried (and has been vindicated by the course of history) the Left engages in a concerted effort to claim him as one of their own and/or use that revision against living, breathing conservatives. As Jonah Goldberg writes, "The only good conservative is a dead conservative… It's just we-the-living who are hateful ogres, troglodytes, and mopers."

Lincoln is the first example of this. The man who declared that the chief "purpose of the Republican party is eminently conservative" and who sought nothing save the restoration of "this government to its original tones…and there to maintain it, looking for no further change" was no liberal (no modern liberal). A believer in free markets, individual liberty and the rule of law, Lincoln would have loathed the large administrative state and social welfare regime Democrats envision today. These initiatives create quasi-permanent subclasses of government dependents and instill a disincentive to labor, the surest means Lincoln envisioned to self-perfection and social advancement. His opposition to slavery was predicated not only in his belief in the natural rights of man but in the knowledge that, as Allen C. Guelzo writes, "allowing one man to own the fruits of another man's labor…discouraged hard work in both."

Lincoln never spoke of leveling down the playing field or "sharing the wealth." Instead "the weights should be lifted from the shoulders of all men" allowing "the humblest man an equal chance to get rich with everybody else."

Lincoln's top hat simply will not fit the head of today's Democratic donkey.

Now it is Ronald Reagan. The man who declared that "government is the problem" as he sought massive reductions in its size and scope was apparently a moderate pragmatist, in sharp contrast to the conservatives of today who are….well, saying and trying to do the exact same thing. Liberals from Andrea Mitchell to Eugene Robinson to TIME have alleged an affinity between Ronald Reagan and the center-left that the world somehow failed to notice since his days as a New Dealer in the Screen Actors' Guild.

Regrettably, liberals who try to pull this stunt ignore two items, one being that pretty much everything he stood for in his public life was (and still is) inimical to the Left's creed. Not only did he come to the White House pursuing aggressive spending cuts (and would leave it lamenting that he had not cut more), but the abolition of entire cabinet-level departments. He sought cuts to Social Security and Medicare (rebuffed by Congress). He exponentially increased defense spending. He cut taxes (and when he had to raise them as part of a compromise with Congressional Democrats he lamented that his heart "wasn't in it"). He was firmly and vocally pro-life. His Justice Department aggressively promoted originalism to counter decades of the judicial left amorphously interpreting the Constitution to mean whatever they wanted it to. In a deliberate departure from détente, he pursued a policy of confrontation with the Soviet Union that could lead to one thing and one thing only: "We win, they lose."

Today's liberals not only ignore all of this in alleging that Reagan was a moderate (or even a liberal), but they also disingenuously ignore the stubborn little reality that they opposed him in all of these things in forms every bit as passionate, ranging-on-hateful as they did George W. Bush. When alive the Left labeled him a "dunce," an "ideologue," a "right-wing extremist," and a "cowboy." At one point Tip O'Neill went so far as to say that there was "evil…in the White House…And that evil is a man who has no care and no concern for the working class of America and the future generations of America." Praising his diplomacy in ending the Cold War now, liberals howled when he labeled the Soviet Union an "evil empire." (To call Reagan himself "evil" was apparently kosher, but damn the man who dared label a regime responsible for the death and oppression of millions in such terms.)

Had there been blogs or cable news the Kos' and Olbermanns would have treated forty every bit as vituperatively as they treated forty-three.

Ronald Reagan was no squishy moderate or liberal, and as Steven F. Hayward writes, those on the Left who now contend otherwise "should be made to explain why they appreciate the virtues of conservatives [especially Reagan] only after they are gone from the scene."

One suspects that, placed on the wrong side of history, they are not so much trying to pull Reagan towards themselves but themselves towards Reagan and away from the fact that he was right and they were wrong. (They are not above scoring cheap political points over conservatives in the here-and-now either.)

If the metaphor above may be strained a little, Reagan's top hat does not fit the heads of liberals today any better than Lincoln's.

Mubarak's Address

Prior to Hosni Mubarak's national address today the masses gathered in Tahrir Square were in high spirits and absorbed in chants tinged with a sense of triumph. Buoyed by reports Mubarak would be announcing his resignation, they also had no other logical conclusion to come to. With what purpose would Mubarak come before his people again unless something in the plans he laid out in his last speech had changed?

No apparent one.

Instead of announcing what everyone planned to hear though, he simply reiterated that he would stay until September, that he was transferring some powers to his vice president, and that he would pursue some constitutional reforms.

Unsurprisingly Egyptians are furious and some sort of violence is expected tomorrow.

One has to wonder what exactly Mubarak was hoping to accomplish. He has long since lost credibility with his countrymen and so nothing he could say short of resignation would placate them. In fact, the only motive that would fit the import of his address today is a desire to see the country he pretends to be the champion of burn, which it quite possibly could now.

The Meaninglessness of ‘Judicial Activism’

Adjectives used pejoratively in the political lexicon tend to lose their original meaning the longer their currency is. After awhile they transform from something specific you disagree with to anything and anyone you disagree with or view negatively. Such became the case with "fascist", "neoconservative" and (liberals would argue) "socialist."

Such has now also become the case with "judicial activist." Used originally by conservatives to pejoratively describe the Warren Court and what they alleged to be its departures from the traditional (and constitutional) role of the judiciary, the moniker has now evolved into the designation both spectral sides employ on judicial acts they do not agree with.

To wit, the ink had barely dried on Judge Vinson's decision invalidating the entirety of last year's health-care reform as unconstitutional before the Obama Administration lashed out at it as a clear case of "judicial activism."

The term has now graduated into the pantheon of its aforementioned predecessors, which is to say it has floated into the realm of utter meaninglessness. No longer applied to a specific type of judicial behavior, and instead used to describe quite disparate ones by disparate sides, to say that an act of the third branch is an example of "judicial activism" is now to say no more than that you disagree with said act.

1099 Repeal

This week the Senate repealed the 1099 provision of the recent health-care law which would have required all businesses to file tax forms each and every time they spent $600 on a single vendor. The extra financial burden this would place on small-business (at a time when we are putatively trying to encourage job growth) is self-evident.

That such an odious example of the federal government's insatiable desire to regulate everything in American life made it into the health-care legislation serves as yet another condemnation of both the legislation itself and the manner in which it was enacted.

Woefully unpopular with the American people, the Democratic super-majorities in control of Congress had to ram through the legislation (through greasing the skids in a manner that defines "corruption") before further scrutiny exposed the bill even more. As a result, final legislation that exceeded a thousand pages in length was shoved through in a matter of days before anyone, including those voting on it, had a chance to actually read and adequately understand what they were voting on.

In consequence, provisions such as this – which no one could rationally vote for after mature deliberation – became the sovereign law of the land.

This state of affairs makes a mockery of President Obama's/Congressional Democrats' claim that the debate over the health-care act is over. The final legislation that was passed and signed was never discussed or debated in any meaningful sense prior to passage, begging the question how anything can be concluded that has never actually begun?

Besides, elected officials are not the ultimate arbiter of what is settled and what is not – the American people are. If you put it in the most charitable terms possible, Americans have deep-abiding reservations about this legislation, especially its most significant provisions. Distinct pluralities to clear majorities favor comprehensive repeal while even more simply 'oppose' the legislation. When you think about it, it is appalling that Democrats forced this 'reform' upon the American public in the dead of night and are now responding to their further objection with a blithe shrug and declaration that the debate is over.

Ultimately the moral of this specific story is that Democrats would have saved themselves time, anguish and embarrassment if they had allowed enough time to scrutinize the entirety of the bill prior to its passage. If you actually read something before acting on it you tend to have an understanding of exactly what it is your acting upon and you are saved from having to repeal something you were the author of a few months prior.

On Affairs in Egypt

The United States has called Hosni Mubarak a friend for thirty years under the postulate that his presidency was the lone bulwark preventing Islamist control of one of the strategically pivotal countries in the region.

Perhaps this was correct. Perhaps it was either Mubarak as he has always been or the Muslim Brotherhood. Perhaps we were never able to utilize Mubarak as a stopgap while simultaneously taking steps to encourage the development of Egyptian civil society – the precondition to a sustainable system of representative government. There are, after all, real limits to the influence of the most powerful superpower the world has ever known.

Regardless, Egypt, the Middle East and the United States are in the moment they are in now because of the choice we made to sustain Mubarak since the assassination of his predecessor. He has always ruled absolutely over his country and by the same means that he repressed violent Islamist elements he repressed any and every viable democratic element.

That combined with the eruption of popular disgust leads to a dynamic where he stands on the precipice of being driven from power, leaving a gaping void in his wake. Because he has spent his time in power quashing democratic development there is no such component that can step in and fill that vacuum when he is gone, leaving the very real and terrifying possibility that the Muslim Brotherhood or whatever name radical Islam calls itself will be able to assume control without challenge. (Mubarak repressed both Islamists and democrats, but as the sword of Mohammed has a head start of a few centuries and so better organization than democracy in the broader Middle East it is exponentially better prepared to seize the opportunity when it presents itself.)

The American decision to prop up Mubarak might have prevented an Islamist takeover of Egypt for thirty years – perhaps this was our only choice, the least-worst choice – but it has left us in a particular vexing bind now. Mubarak's tenure has been a bulwark heretofore but has conversely decimated the one societal element that can permanently prevent the Islamist takeover long feared. Now we are left, seemingly helplessly, watching the one entity (Mubarak) that we needed to prevent another entity (Islamists) from taking control lose power after he has spent decades decimating the only other entity (democracy) that can prevent the second entity (Islamists) from taking power now that his sclerotic regime is crumbling.

All our eggs have been put in one basket and that basket is about to be crushed.

Rewarding Syrian Malfeasance

The Obama Administration appointed Robert Ford to serve as American ambassador to Syria this week, the first time the United States has had such a representative in Damascus since 2005. Answering criticism that this will reward the country for bad behavior, the Washington Times reports that the Administration believes the move will "help persuade the country to change its policies regarding Israel, Lebanon, Iraq and its support for extremist groups."

This rationale is utter nonsense and it exhibits the same ass-backwards understanding of the nature of rogue regimes that led the Clinton and Bush administrations to make their respective nuclear agreements with North Korea.

To wit, sending an ambassador to Syria to cause that regime to change its behavior cannot fail to fail because we have already conceded to them prior to any change in behavior.

If anything the Administration's action will only encourage Damascus to persist in its perfidy. Having garnered a concession without having had to make one themselves, they will take away from this only the knowledge that only the hope of a change in their behavior is required to get carrots, no actual change necessary.

Washington can follow one line of conduct if it wants Syria to desist its antics in the Middle East: make it known to Assad that rewards will be given for positive changes in behavior when, and only when, those changes in behavior actually occur. Until that moment nothing will be forthcoming.
 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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 10^th 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.

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.