Sorry for saving the world

One of the most frustrating things about the left is that they seem to have little use for history and even less regard for objective facts. Facts have little use when you just "know" -- in your gut and with every fiber of your being -- that you are right. Emotion trumps rationality every time. How well policies work is always less important than how they make you feel. Try telling a liberal, for example, that the evidence is clear that socialism in Europe has led to flat economic growth, falling birth rates and a 1970s-style economic and social malaise, and you will get a retort about social justice, the moral imperative of universal health care and the "progressive enlightenment" of European environmental policies. On the left, its better to be enlightened than it is to be rich, I guess. In an academic exercise, such tripe is irritating but tolerable. But when such denial of reality becomes the dominant force behind U.S. government policy -- on almost every issue of importance -- it is time to take notice.  I've written many times that Barack Obama lives in a "parallel universe" inhabited by lots of feel-good imagery, moral clarity and social justice. This is the universe of Europe, and his recent trip showed him quite at home among the hand-wringers and apologists who value symbolic gestures over concrete action.

On Sunday, for example, Obama spoke in Prague before a huge crowd and talked about setting the stage for nuclear disarmament -- a long-time moral imperative of the left -- even as North Korea was launching a test missile capable of delivering one of its newly-developed nuclear warheads as far as Tokyo. Mr. Obama responded to this clear violation of U.N. resolutions by referring it back to the U.N. for "further action" -- meaning more hand-wringing backed by timidity. In Obama's world, of course, the U.N. has a special moral authority, and is the arbiter of choice in this kind of crisis. Forget about its track record. The symbolism of China, Russia and France -- not to mention Syria, Gabon and Tahiti -- being in charge of global security is the kind of image that brings smiles to those who believe that the United States is "just another nation". You know who those people are, right? They are the ones now in charge of your government.

Image, as it turns out, is everything on the left. So you will forgive Obama for apologizing all over himself for American "transgressions". He goes to Turkey and apologizes in effect for America's war on terror -- saying that we "are not at war with Islam" -- when, in fact, we are at war with a significant, virulent strain of the religion. He apologizes for the excesses of American capitalism as the root of the current economic crisis, when in reality the engine of the American economy has lifted the standard of living across the world.

Obama is so sorry. In the ultimate irony, the most hubristic of presidents in modern times want to walk the globe with humility. He wants the world -- the same world that America, with its blood and treasure, has saved repeatedly from extremism of all kinds -- to know how badly we feel and how sorry we are. We feel badly for being exceptional, for leading and for fighting for human freedom.

We're sorry for saving the world. I guess next time, we'll leave you with Hitler, Stalin and Saddam Hussein.

There will be blood

Recently I wrote a piece noting that Obama's economic policies are less about fixing the economy and more about retributive justice -- a pernicious form of wealth redistribution designed to achieve a liberal social agenda. This agenda is at the heart of Obama's philosophical orientation -- that same "spreading the wealth around" view that he inadvertently let slip to "Joe the Plumber" on the campaign trail. Many didn't pay attention to this off-hand comment -- but we know now just how revealing it was. Daniel Henninger reinforces the retributive justice argument in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal today and highlights the underlying theory that alights the Obama redistribution plan. He cites a graph created by Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, French economists who "are rock stars of the intellectual left."  Their specialty is "earnings inequality" and "wealth concentration" -- code words for socialist theory designed to validate confiscatory economic policies. It turns out that Piketty and Saez are for Obama what Arthur Laffer was to Ronald Reagan. Perhaps it tells you all you need to know about Barack Obama that his economic philosophy comes from French economists -- that nation of stagnant growth, high taxes and huge public sector unionization. That in itself should be troubling enough.

Piketty and Saez have provided the Obama Administration with their rationale for "soaking the rich". See the following graph:

"As described in Mr. Obama's budget, these two economists have shown that by the end of 2004, the top 1% of taxpayers "took home" more than 22% of total national income. This trend, Fig. 9 notes, began during the Reagan presidency, skyrocketed through the Clinton years, dipped after George Bush beat Al Gore, then marched upward. Widening its own definition of money-grubbers, the budget says the top 10% of households "held" 70% of total wealth."

This kind of income inequality is anathema to those who see an equality of outcomes in society. Never mind, of course, that the top 1% of earners pay almost 40% of all Federal income taxes to begin with, and that from these earners come a huge percentage of the jobs that fuel the economy. Socialists like Piketty and Saez would prefer that everyone dumb down to a common denominator where so-called "winners" and "losers" were much closer together. They would prefer that everyone be mediocre rather than have a few big winners who raise the tide for everyone. And it is exactly the economic philosophy that Obama has now embraced. Massive wealth transfer as social policy.

And it matters not that it is bad economic policy, because fixing the economy is a poor second to the need to dumb America down. In Obama's own words:

"While middle-class families have been playing by the rules, living up to their responsibilities as neighbors and citizens, those at the commanding heights of our economy have not.

Prudent investments in education, clean energy, health care and infrastructure were sacrificed for huge tax cuts for the wealthy and well-connected.

There's nothing wrong with making money, but there is something wrong when we allow the playing field to be tilted so far in the favor of so few. . . . It's a legacy of irresponsibility, and it is our duty to change it."

So if you made a lot of money you somehow cheated -- not living up to your responsibilities, even though you paid your fair share of taxes in what is already a highly progressive tax code.

What a tremendously offensive statement.

This is class warfare pure and simple. Or, as Henninger says, "the primary goal is a massive re-flowing of "wealth" from the top toward the bottom, to stop the moral failure they see in the budget's "Top One Percent of Earners" chart.

And for those top earners -- the engine of our economy -- there will be blood.

Merci, Monsieur le Président

Dear President George W. Bush: As you open a new chapter in your life down in Crawford, Texas, after eight, sometimes turbulent years as the 43rd President of the United States, I would like to take this opportunity to publicly express my eternal gratitude to you for strengthening my faith in America’s destiny as a truly exceptional nation. It all goes back to March 2003. Back then, I remember huddling over my ancient radio trying to pick up medium-wave signals of the BBC World Service for the latest English-language news about the outcome of a summit meeting which you were holding in the Azores with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar to work out a U.N. resolution that might eventually lead to military intervention in Iraq. In hindsight, I can truthfully say that when the report ended with the view that war was imminent, I was born again.

Please, do not get me wrong. I agree that war is ugly and should always be used as a last resort. However World War II taught us that the use of force in a just cause is an eminently virtuous course of action. In March 2003, most Europeans were still wilfully denying the essential truth of that painfully poignant lesson and you were trying hard to educate them.

Therefore, Mr. President, although your brand of conservatism eventually turned out to be too compassionate for my small-government predilections, I want to thank you again for courageously standing up for good against evil. I want to thank you again for steadfastly promoting freedom and democracy in the world. Above all, I want to thank you again for relentlessly protecting America and the American people and conserving the enduring values which your blessed country uniquely stands for.

May God bless you, Sir. May God bless the United States of America.

Yours Faithfully, A French friend of America

Note: “Paoli” is the pen name, er, nom de plume, of our French correspondent. Monsieur is a close student of European and US politics, a onetime exchange student in Colorado and a well-wisher to us Americans. He informs us the original Pasquale Paoli, 1725-1807, was the George Washington of Corsica.

BHO steers US toward Eurosocialism

As Barack Obama is about to be inaugurated as America’s 44th President, a huge question mark hangs over the future of American society and, by extension, over the future of freedom in the world: Will a majority of the American people turn their backs on individual responsibility, free enterprise and the Constitution and follow in Europe’s Socialistic footsteps, or will they remain true to America’s exceptional heritage and destiny? As they make their fateful decision amid talk of Big Government entitlements, bail-outs and deficit spending, I would strongly urge them to ponder the penetrating analysis which Barry Goldwater made of the effects of the Welfare state on individual freedom in The Conscience of A Conservative almost fifty years ago:

“The currently favored instrument of collectivization is the Welfare state. The collectivists have not abandoned their ultimate goal – to subordinate the individual to the State – but their strategy has changed. They have learned that Socialism can be achieved through Welfarism quite as well as Nationalization.

They understand that private property can be confiscated as effectively by taxation as by expropriating it. They understand that the individual can be put at the mercy of the State – not only by making the State his employer - but by divesting him of the means to provide for his personal needs and by giving the State the responsibility of caring for those needs from cradle to grave.

Moreover, they have discovered – and here is the critical point – that Welfarism is much more compatible with the political processes of a democratic society. Nationalization ran into popular opposition, but the collectivists feel sure the Welfare State can be erected by the simple expedient of “free” hospitalization, “free” retirement pay and so on… (…)

I do not welcome this shift of strategy. Socialism-through-Welfarism poses a far greater danger to freedom than Socialism-through-Nationalization precisely because it is more difficult to combat. The evils of Nationalization are self-evident and immediate. Those of Welfarism are veiled and tend to be postponed. (…) The effect of Welfarism on freedom will be felt later on – after its beneficiaries have become its victims, after dependence on government has turned into bondage and it is too late to unlock the jail.”

Judging by Goldwater’s 1960 impeccably conservative standards, Big Government in a country like France has spread so much wealth around to build a Welfare state of its own that French society often feels like a gulag.

As Barack Obama’s term as President of the United States is about to start, calls for philosophical and political restraint within the GOP sound irresponsible, if not cowardly. Due respect for the democratic process should not be mistaken for acquiescing in America’s destruction as an exceptionally freedom-loving country.

As in 1964, 1980, 1984 and 1994, it is time for Conservatives to stand up and be counted.

Note: “Paoli” is the pen name, er, nom de plume, of our French correspondent. Monsieur is a close student of European and US politics, a onetime exchange student in Colorado and a well-wisher to us Americans. He informs us the original Pasquale Paoli, 1725-1807, was the George Washington of Corsica.

Enough with the Euro-smugness

From east to west, living room to board room, Americans are watching a slew of disturbing TV news stories . The focus of the citizen is overwhelmingly on the economy and his or her own, modest and hard earned treasure pile. This is not surprising, after all the Dow is behaving like a drunken clam and the finance sector is as chaotic as a college department meeting. The media is constantly rattling everyone’s cages and our commercial breaks are now plagued with the most annoying ads known to man: those of the goldbug.

In the depths of an election the worry meter on many Americans is high. We all want answers to our economic question and, in general, want to see this country restored to a place of prosperity, power, and might. But across the eastern ocean, in the world-weary lands of Western Europe, a strange and different dialogue is bubbling to the surface. In it, the cause for America’s troubles is not practical or function but moral and the feeling is not of despair but strangely, of glee.

As the United States hits a rather large bump in the road, many in Europe’s chattering class are taking up a rather despicable tone. This tone, in the forefront hammers home the idea that America’s Economic woes derive somehow from moral failing, that her age of dominance is over, and that both are happy occasions to root onward.

Moral supremacy and the role as judge has always been a part of the European tradition. Since 2000, this proclivity has been primarily focused against the United States and Israel in discussions that usually, either, apologize for Islamic terrorism, lift up the European ‘way’ as just, or simply scapegoat America for a host of domestic European problems. Recently, full and front page articles have popped up in major European papers claiming that the age of American dominance is over.

Strangely these articles and comments come with, not just a statement of fact, but a moral judgment and indictment of American and her way of life. Quite often the words ‘redneck’ ‘bubba’ and ‘empire’ appear when authors mention America and her apparently lost power.

Moreover, in these periodicals there is also an obvious bit of smug cheer. That is to say, that Americans current crisis is not just mentioned it is cheered on with a form of moiling academic demonology. In these circles, somehow, the financial troubles of America and Americans is actually a good thing.

Such feelings and statements are as uninformed as they are vile. To state things as they are and point out fault is one thing; but to actually root for calamity and chaos is quite another. Moreover, it is quite self-destructive. An important fact seems to escape most European chatterers, that is, if America ‘goes down’ that Europe will not be far behind.

We have already seen this as European markets have tumbled in the wake of U.S. financial problems. In a more abstract sense, a removal of U.S. power abroad would force Europe to actually grow up. Specifically, they would have to actually spend money on national defense and foreign policy as opposed to simply relying on the ample subsidy provided by both the United States and NATO.

The historian or more mature reader can attest to the fact that such disruptions from Europe are not exactly new. For years, on many European College Campuses, it has been both fashionable and convenient to viciously assail the United States. Such criticism usually comes in the form of vaguely defined critiques of U.S. policies and or a bizarrely styled bit of political wishful thinking that is not founded in the realities of America or Europe.

Even further back it should be remembered that in the 19th century it was the keen desire of many European Nations to subjugated American foreign policy and behavior to their will and call. Happily this did not happen and it is important that it does not happen now. Listening to friends is fine, but doing whatever they say while they slap you in the face is not.

Unfortunately, it is likely that these academic and anemic voices will continue to blame the United States with the smug liberal tone of Maddow, Mahr, Obama and Pelosi. This blame game will probably disparage the United States for the global economic crisis without the responsibility of say acknowledging that Europe readily invested in America and made economic blunders of its own. This is a shame and will only hinder Europe’s own recovery.

Relations between Europe and America have always been complex and full of recrimination. I like Europe, I like their food, silly accents and women, and I also share their desire for close relations. But I don’t appreciate their chattering classes smug back biting and moral judgment. I’d also say that if Europe wants closer relations and wants to influence U.S. policy, it would help if they don’t constantly attack the U.S. with puerile name calling and instead replace it with a real dialogue.