Galt's Gulch could be north of border

Have you noticed what's been going on in Canada? It is now the right-most of any of the English-speaking nations, or the G-7 for that matter. It is also the only one whose head of government, Stephen Harper, is economically literate. Those aren't my words. They are the opening of a pithy email I got from James Bennett -- author of the important book "The Anglosphere Challenge" and one of Boulder's few resident conservatives -- after my recent column on the impending backlash to Obama's collectivist agenda. The shrug of Atlas may start, of all places, up north under the Maple Leaf flag and then spread to the US, Bennett believes. Here's the rest of his analysis:

Canada had no housing bubble and no housing crisis. (No Community Reinvestment Act, either.) No populist laws forbidding interstate banking, ever in their history, so they have twenty sound banks instead of thousands of ones in crisis.

Obama wants to introduce card check - - they have had it, and have gradually been abolishing it, provonce by province. Paul Krugman is saying we will have to go to a VAT -- Harper is phasing out Canada's. Our corporate income tax is higher than theirs, and Obama will soon have our personal income tax rates higher than theirs. Obama will introduce single-payer health care -- their Supreme Court has said they must start permitting private provision.

Their stock markets have been getting more and more American IPOs, because they avoided the nuttiness of Sarbanes-Oxley, the gift that keeps on giving to London and Vancouuver. And of course because they have "loser pays", no contingent-fee lawsuits, and no punitive damages, their legal system is far less shark-infested.

The biggest problem has been their lack of an effective Bill of rights. But that is starting to change as some people with guts have stood up against their "human rights" commissions. Meanwhile Holder is talking hate-speech laws.

Everything Obama wants to bring in here, has been tried in Canada, and is gradually being phased out. Maybe Alberta will be Galt's Gulch this time around.

James Bennett can be reached at jamescbennett@gmail.com

Obama the wanderer

I've been struggling over the last few weeks to put my finger on what bothers me so much about Barack Obama. Yes, I know that sounds strange coming from me -- since the pages of my blog are filled with criticisms of the man and his beliefs. But there is something else that is bugging me about the Obama presidency, and it isn't so much about policy as it is a feeling that I have -- a sense of the peripatetic way he is going about this very serious job he has. I've been watching Obama now travel from media event to media event, fluttering about the country with much fanfare but little substance. There is something missing. A sense of steadiness. His devotion to his teleprompter -- already the stuff of scorn and ridicule -- is unsettling. Wasn't he supposed to be the eloquent one who wields a brilliant intellect? The next great communicator?

Peggy Noonan does a masterful job in today's Wall Street Journal of putting my sense of Obama into words -- it's a must read. I've been frustrated with Noonan's commentary about Obama since the election -- she seemed all too willing to accept the notion that Obama really is some new, transcendental leader. But no more. This most recent piece captures perfectly the true essence of the "Obama phenomena" -- full of sound and fury, and signifying nothing:

He is willowy when people yearn for solid, reed-like where they hope for substantial, a bright older brother when they want Papa, cool where they probably prefer warmth. All of which may or may not hurt Barack Obama in time...

Such impressions—coolness, slightness—can come to matter only if they capture or express some larger or more meaningful truth. At the moment they connect, for me, to something insubstantial and weightless in the administration's economic pronouncements and policies. The president seems everywhere and nowhere, not fully focused on the matters at hand. He's trying to keep up with the news cycle with less and less to say.

Our new president is chasing the news cycle, going on Jay Leno and following the cues from the dwarfs in Congress -- that august body of tax cheats and pork spenders where Obama most recently worked. He is engaged in a dance of reaction as opposed to a steady march of action, all at a time when we are dealing with crisis at home and war abroad. This is a time for steeliness and strength, and what we have is unfocused, peripatetic waffling.

Those of you who read this blog know that this comes as no surprise to me. Barack Obama is a man of great salesmanship, who understands how to get you excited to buy something, but then knows nothing of the details once you've purchased it. He's already on to the next sale, the next opportunity to close the deal and show his ability to convince and cajole. His sense of office is a constant campaign -- lots of platitudes and generalities, the kind of stuff that makes crowds clap. He's a jack of all and master of none. And now that he is the master of our collective domain -- the United States of America -- the weaknesses show through with growing clarity and alarm.

As Noonan succinctly argues, Obama has two jobs -- to fix the economy and to keep us safe. On both scores he seems wanting. When Dick Cheney recently criticized Obama for making us less safe in the wake of his recent decisions on Guantanamo and interrogation, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs reacted with disdain. Mr. Cheney is part of a 'Republican cabal.' 'I guess Rush Limbaugh was busy.' This was cheap."

Cheap and wrong. For whatever you wish to say about Dick Cheney, he know of what he speaks -- having seen first hand the post 9/11 intelligence briefings for 8 years. Cheney knows that the threat from Islamic terrorism is a constant drumbeat that can't be wished or talked away. He knows that the Obama administration has not yet found a serious footing on this issue -- and that this puts the country at risk. Noonan says it well:

What can be used will be used. We are a target. Something bad is going to happen—don't we all know this? Are we having another failure of imagination?

A month ago former FBI director Robert Mueller, in a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, warned of Mumbai-type terrorist activity, saying a similar attack could happen in a U.S. city. He spoke of the threat of homegrown terrorists who are "radicalized," "indoctrinated" and recruited for jihad. Mumbai should "reinvigorate" U.S. intelligence efforts. The threat is not only from al Qaeda but "less well known groups." This had the hard sound of truth.

Contrast it with the new secretary of homeland security, Janet Napolitano, who, in her first speech and testimony to congress, the same week as Mr. Mueller's remarks, did not mention the word terrorism once. This week in an interview with Der Spiegel, she was pressed: "Does Islamist terrorism suddenly no longer pose a threat to your country?" Her reply: "I presume there is always a threat from terrorism." It's true she didn't use the word terrorism in her speech, but she did refer to "man-caused" disasters. "This is perhaps only a nuance, but it demonstrates that we want to move away from the politics of fear."

Ah. Well this is only a nuance, but her use of language is a man-caused disaster.

Exactly right. Eight years after 9/11 and two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and we are still learning the same lesson over and over again: there are enemies who want to destroy us out there, they are Islamic fundamentalists and they can and will use any weapon they can get their hands on -- from machine guns to suitcase nuclear bombs. It isn't an issue of nuance, it is one of survival. The administration's responses -- as Dick Cheney points out -- should in no way be comforting.

These are the two great issues, the economic crisis and our safety. In the face of them, what strikes one is the weightlessness of the Obama administration, the jumping from issue to issue and venue to venue from day to day. Isaiah Berlin famously suggested a leader is a fox or a hedgehog. The fox knows many things but the hedgehog knows one big thing. In political leadership the hedgehog has certain significant advantages, focus and clarity of vision among them. Most presidents are one or the other. So far Mr. Obama seems neither.

Very well said, Peggy.

Optimism is our only choice

Editor: One of the great things about blogging is the way it brings forward new voices, bypasses credentialism, and stirs the currents of thought in valuable, unexpected ways. I never expected that lunch in the university dining room with CCU's young soccer coach, newly transplanted from Wisconsin to the Rockies, would connect me with a conservative kindred spirit and fiery patriot who also blogs entrepreneurially on personal finance issues. But that's how it went on the day I met Josh Caucutt. Backbone America is delighted to welcome him as a new contributor. Optimism is our only choice

“Always after a defeat and a respite, the Shadow takes another shape and grows again.” “I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo. “So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” --The Fellowship of the Ring, Tolkien

I believe we are in difficult days. I believe that history shows us that we might be headed for some of the worst days that the United States has ever known. This Congress has added a huge weight of debt around the neck of every man, woman and especially every child. Furthermore, all of the talk of the future seems to hold only the dim promise of new taxes, higher taxes, more debt and greater levels of government involvement in our daily lives. We are on the precipice of socialism. In the name of crisis, our government is choking the lift out of small businesses, entrepreneurs and all who desire to pursue life, liberty and happiness with as few government entanglements as possible. Even a great thinker like Thomas Sowell is in the clutches of pessimism.

These forces conspire to pull us ever closer to total government dependency and inevitable total government control. Sometimes it seems like we are caught in that frequent science fiction movie plot where the townspeople are slowly being turned to zombies or possessed by aliens until the hero is the only person left with his senses intact. He runs around looking for help, but everyone to whom he turns is already working for the evil that he seeks to defeat. He struggles and flails until some glimmer of hope motivates him to act and eventually he obtains the Hollywood ending that we all expect. Except we are not guaranteed an “ever after” ending in real life.

Yet American culture has always held that glimmer of hope - that belief that everything is going to turn out all right. We find it in our history, our literature, in our movies and in ourselves. We must be optimistic about the future, it is our only choice. To wallow in pessimism or apathy is to give up and admit defeat. Optimism spurred the War for Independence, optimism emancipated a race of people, optimism carried the day on June 6, 1944 - optimism and a commitment to duty no matter the cost.

It's true that recently my own little blog has focused on what is wrong with the direction of our country -- but while I believe there is cause for concern, I want to personally act optimistically and I hope that my readers will do the same.

Don’t make excuses for coming up short. Find a way to get it done. Fear can be a good motivator. We don’t know how far we can stretch until we are really pulled. Quitting never fed a family, never ran a business, and never got someone out of debt. Avoid allowing government to take credit for your success. Be the difference in your life and the lives around you. Don’t let government be your excuse for failure. Government can make things difficult for people, but government can never squelch the drive, innovation, creativity and independent spirit that is alive and well in this country.

Freedom is difficult to win and difficult to keep, but if there is any group of people on the earth who can accomplish both, it is us.

Joshua Caucutt blogs three times a week at Rocket Finance.

When will Atlas shrug?

(Denver Post, Mar. 15) What is the breaking point? Where will the resistance form? Heavy questions, but unavoidable in the current political climate. The productive members of society can only be pushed so far, some say. What they envision is not defiance of law or a reversal of the election. It is people’s growing disengagement from a new economic order that punishes effort and rewards envy – the creepy future that Bill Ritter and Barack Obama intend for us. National columnist Michelle Malkin calls that withdrawal, “going Galt.” Malkin was the first speaker last weekend when several hundred Coloradans gathered for a free-market leadership conference in Colorado Springs. Her reference was to John Galt, the individualist hero of Ayn Rand’s novel, “Atlas Shrugged.” She told of seeing a placard at the protest rally for Obama’s stimulus bill signing that warned: “Atlas will shrug.”

So what, you ask. So in human behavior, incentives matter. People are choosers, not automatons. Mess them over enough and they’re out of here. All history proves it. “We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us,” the bitter joke among Soviet factory drones, sums up collectivism’s ultimate failure wherever tried.

Of course in the 1950s, when Rand was writing her epic about a slow-spreading spontaneous strike among Americans fed up with big government, tomorrow supposedly belonged to New Soviet Man. Reagan, Thatcher, and John Paul II, the three champions of freedom who would prove otherwise, weren’t yet heard of.

But we’re now told that 2008, with its routine recession and its celebrity election, showed freedom is untrustworthy after all. Economic makeover via legislative intervention is the fashion fad of 2009, driven by DC Democrats under Pelosi and Reid along with Denver Democrats under Carroll and Groff. Suddenly everyone’s a socialist, crows Newsweek. Suddenly the headlines mirror “Atlas Shrugged,” laments the Wall Street Journal.

The novel -- with John Galt as capitalist superman and Dagny Taggart, Ayn Rand’s alter ego, as railroad tycoon – may not be great literature. But its message of radical self-reliance has inspired millions across the decades. And the story is set right here. “We can’t lose Colorado. It’s our last hope,” says a Taggart employee at the start. A Rocky Mountain valley is the retreat from Galt triumphs at the end.

Retreat attendees at The Broadmoor, where Yaron Brook of the Ayn Rand Institute spoke after Malkin and “Atlas Shrugged” was assigned reading, weren’t about to unplug Galt-style from daily life in protest against wind power, national health care, and charity-choking taxes. But they took seriously the disincentive effects against wealth creation and social comity in these and other collectivist proposals. We should too.

As ever more people ride in the wagon and fewer are left to pull it, there will come a breaking point. Crowding taxation onto the highest earners and debt onto our kids, as President Obama proposes, invites collapse. Ignoring the constitution at will, as Gov. Ritter and the spending lobby do, breeds contempt. Ruin must result. Did the USA learn nothing from the USSR’s implosion, wondered Vladimir Putin recently.

Yes, we did. Cold War victory taught us the power of ideas. The East crumbled when the West asserted the superiority of liberty, wakened by thinkers like Hayek with his expose’ of the road to serfdom and Bastiat with his ridicule of “everyone seeking to live at the expense of everyone else.”

Also influential was Rand with her capitalist commandos. Galt and Taggart’s crusade was idea-powered. With moral truth they defeated the lies of something for nothing and freedom through coercion. Not even the government office of Morale Conditioner, censoring radio, could stop their entrepreneurial comeback.

Their strike against the redistributionist guilt trip was fiction. But we can shrug it off for real. Colorado could be our last hope.

Geert Wilders marginalized at CPAC

Geert Wilders, the Dutch parliamentarian who faces trial for criticizing Islam and was banned from Britain, was at least allowed into the US for a speech in Washington last month. But the stepchild treatment he received at the Conservative Political Action Conference, and the shrill counter-propaganda distributed that day by Muslim groups, dramatize the creeping cowardice that may eventually leave America as intimidated as Europe and the UK in the face of soft jihad. Mr. Wilders was hosted separately from CPAC by David Horowitz and a few other outside sponsors. He spoke at 6PM on Saturday, Feb. 28, in the Blue Room at the Omni Shoreham Hotel, on the far opposite side of the hotel from the rest of the conference . I suspect that the American Conservative Union, conference host and supposedly the bastion of liberty, was fearful of “offending” the Muslims present.

We lined up for the talk. The doors were closed and two policemen were standing with metal detector wands.

While we were waiting, a pamphlet was distributed to those of us waiting in line. I have included a scan of it below at the following link, with a couple of photos from the occasion.

Let me address the accusations in that pamphlet: The first point blames the Dutch government for

o “redlining Muslim populations into poverty” o “Muslims held hostage to living in Ghettos o “children receiving little educational resources” o “making 43% less wage.

But let us see what Ayaan Hersi Ali says about this:

“I was beginning to see that Muslims in Holland were being allowed to form their own pillar in Dutch society, with their own schools and their own way of life, just like the Catholics or Jews. They were being left politely alone to live in their own world. The idea was that immigrants needed self-respect, which would come from a strong sense of membership in a community. They should be permitted to set up Quranic schools on Dutch soil. There should be government subsidies for Muslim community groups. To force Muslims to adapt to Dutch values was thought to conflict with those values; people ought to be free to believe and behave as they wish.” ( “Infidel”, Ayaan Hersi Ali, Free Press, New York, NY 10020 page 245)

Thus, the “redlining” was the Muslims choosing on their own to live in their own communities. The schools the Muslims set up themselves were Quranic. Memorizing Suras of the Qur’an and learning Jihad aren’t exactly subjects that lead to gainful employment. Yet they blame the Dutch for no earning power!

The second point in that 2/28 leaflet blames the Dutch for:

o not integrating Muslim youth into their society o For leaving the youth to become gang members o For the their violence o For their unemployment

But what does Ayaan Hersi Ali say about this:

“Children weren’t encouraged to ask questions, and their creativity was not stimulated. They were taught to keep their distance from unbelievers and to obey” (Ibid, page 246).

The leaflet's next point makes the following accusations:

o Mr. Wilders’ translations of the Qur’an are wrong because he doesn’t speak Arabic o That they are “taken out of context”.

Islamic doctrine holds that the Qur’an is Universal. Therefore, are the Muslims for America saying it can only be read in Arabic? Only a small portion of the world’s Muslims read and write Arabic. The Qur’an is translated effectively into many languages.

As for the Quranic quotes in “Fitna” being out of context, Robert Spencer had a Qur’an Commentary at the meeting!. He looked up the passage referring to “strike the unbeliever in the neck”. The context was “usually causing death”.

The Muslims for America went on to assert they were “moderate” and challenged Mr. Wilders to a debate.

But they are saying the same things that CAIR and the rest of the Muslim Brotherhood front organization say: that the Muslims are “victims” and are taking no responsibility for their situation, blaming everyone in sight except themselves.. In my opinion, this sounds like the same deceptive “cultural Jihad” we see everywhere else. Nothing seems“moderate” here!

Debating Muslims is a non-starter. Their concept of “Taqiyya” permits deceit if it furthers the cause of Islam. (Source: Sahih Muslim, Book 032 Number 6303)

The conclusion is stark: it seems we had Dhimmis (defined as a non-Muslim semi-slave that has submitted to Islam: who is ignorant of Islam and afraid of “offending” Muslims) running CPAC 2009. Except for William Bennett noting that the assault of Islam on our Civilization has to be faced and discussed, not a single speaker or panel even mentioned the most serious issue we face in the world today.

My suspicion is that the smiling and hand shaking “Muslims for America” could be infiltrating Jihadists who do not have our long term interest at heart. Are they tied to the Muslim Brotherhood and funded by the Saudis like the rest?

Islam divides the world into two halves: the “Dar Al Islam”, and the “Dar Al Harb”. Pius Muslims would NEVER ally themselves with the “Kaffirs” to strengthen a “Kaffir” government devised by unbelievers. Their sacred obligation is to impose on all humanity The Shari’a, which comes straight from Allah himself.