Archive for November 2009

The Crime of the Century

Monday, November 30, 2009

Few recent events have illustrated the ineptitude, and political agenda, of the mainstream media more dramatically than “Climagate.” The revelation of email correspondence from the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia, documenting various attempts to suppress data and manipulate scientific “consensus” with thuggish tactics, confirms what critics of the global-warming movement have always maintained: it has a lot more to do with money and politics than science. In fact, the global-warming movement is essentially the opposite of science – the manipulation and destruction of empirical data to support a theory whose accuracy was decided in advance.

Those tempted to compare global warming to a religion should consider that religious faith does not require the willful suppression of knowledge. Calling the belief in global warming a “religion” is an insult to religion. It’s a mistake I have made in the past, and I owe the faithful of all religions an apology for doing so.

Global warming is a scam, pure and simple. By any objective measure, it’s the crime of the century, with a dollar value that dwarfs the sins of Bernie Madoff or Enron. People like Al Gore have become millionaires by selling books and “carbon credits” to their marks… many of whom knew perfectly well they were being taken for a ride, but felt political pressure to play along, or saw opportunities created by the exercise of raw government power. The economic damage from legislation passed in response to this hoax will run into trillions of dollars, if Barack Obama’s disastrous cap-and-trade legislation passes the Senate.

An objective media would respond to this blockbuster news story with front-page headlines and “special report” television treatment. By now, the authors of the incriminating Climate Research Unit emails would be infamous around the world. Top operators of the global warming racket, such as Al Gore, would be hiding in their mansions, afraid to face the mob of angry reporters gathered outside. Liberals love to accuse big corporations of manufacturing crises and taking advantage of consumers with false product information and deceptive advertising. Here is the paramount example of those offenses, on a scale that would widen the eyes of the greatest titans of industry. If a private corporation had conducted a scam as vast, and as destructive to the prosperity of nations – and the aspirations of the working poor…

… but no private corporation could do anything like this, could they? The global warming scam is the kind of crime that only Big Government can mastermind.

Private industry makes plenty of mistakes, but the global warming scam is defined by its utter contempt for costs and benefits - the laws of gravity that hold businesses in orbit around the free market. The global warming cult maintains that no chances can be taken – we must ignore all reservations and contrary evidence, and proceed as if the worst possible outcomes are inevitable, unless we take drastic action. We have to take this action immediately – not even the slightest delay is acceptable. Members of the global warming cult provide constantly shifting dates for environmental doomsday, painting dire pictures of coastal cities becoming aquariums after the polar ice caps melt. With the eager assistance of media allies, the cult produces ridiculous propaganda, like Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth or the movie The Day After Tomorrow, embraced warmly for their “good intentions” despite being filled with exaggerations and outright lies.

Business leaders confronted with this kind of hard sell, blown in their faces with frantic enthusiasm, generally respond with suspicion, because they know a con when they see one. When you tell a businessman he is morally obligated to accept a deal that imposes monstrous costs, without visible benefits, and he must agree immediately without asking any further questions, he will get up and leave the table… unless you point a gun at him, and force him to sit back down. That’s where government comes in.

It’s easiest to con someone when they want to be fooled. Global warming is like pornography for Big Government addicts. It provides the rationale for sweeping new powers. It can be used as a moral club to beat class enemies. It creates a climate of perpetual emergency that allows endless taxation and erosion of liberty. There is great power to be gained by those who act as the harbingers of a disaster that is always too far away for hard-nosed analysis, but too close for careful deliberation.

Like most of the biggest government crimes, this one will never be prosecuted. No one will go to jail for the bogus “hockey stick” climate graph, or compensate victims for economic damages. The suckers who bought carbon credits will never be made whole. When corporate miscreants like Enron are brought to justice, there is much talk about setting precedents, and sending warnings to other would-be lawbreakers. Such warnings are never sent to government crooks, and no one talks about the need to set precedents. Indeed, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs was still parroting the “science is settled” line today… days after anyone capable of rational thought could possibly agree. No one milking political power from the global warming scam will feel any need to back down or start making sense, until they start paying a significant political price.

If describing the acolytes and hucksters of global warming as “criminals” seems harsh, ask yourself how this situation would be treated if the miscreants had been operating within the private sector. Imagine a group of corporations conspiring to create an imaginary crisis, using junk science and false advertising, with their original raw data safely shredded. Imagine these greedy capitalists selling fantastically expensive “solutions” to the problem they manufactured, and demanding control over scores of other industries in the bargain. Picture an advertising campaign reaching into movies, books, music, and “news” programs. Imagine corporate representatives invading schools to indoctrinate children from an early age, and absolutely saturating children’s literature and television with slogans and carefully constructed horror stories about how the world will suffer, if their parents don’t play ball and start forking over money and liberties to the conglomerate.

Now imagine a hacked server disgorging emails between officers and technicians of these corporations, worded exactly the same as the East Anglia Climate Research Unit messages, and ask yourself how long it would take for the first Senate subcommittees to issue subpoenas, the first crisis news specials to pre-empt prime-time programming, or the first grand juries to convene.

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The Consent of the Governed

Sunday, November 29, 2009

Jonah Goldberg of National Review recently wrote about the high-stakes political battle over health care reform:

Some moderate Democrats are making a side bet that they can vote for it out of solidarity and then run back to the center come the 2010 elections.

Well, I say let it ride. And just to make it more interesting, Republicans should promise to repeal “ObamaCare” if they get a congressional majority in 2010. As National Review’s Ramesh Ponnuru argues, that way moderate Democrats won’t be able to run away from their votes come 2010. They’ll be on notice that this will be the campaign issue of the election. And moderate Republicans will be on notice to resist the temptation to tinker with Obamacare rather than defenestrate it once it’s passed.

Sure, I’d rather see this health-care proposal die stillborn (and that’s still quite possible). But if it passes, the upside is that Americans will finally be given a stark philosophical choice on a fundamental issue. That’s much rarer than you might think (recall that the Iraq War and the bailouts were bipartisan affairs).

Earlier in the article, Goldberg complains that “the quest for the middle ground usually rewards the worst kinds of politicians — those devoid of any core convictions and only concerned with feathering their own nests — and yields the worst kinds of policies.” The health-care debate presents the kind of sharp ideological contrast that makes it hard for unprincipled politicians to seek shelter in the mushy bog of the middle ground. Over the weekend, the libertarian Cato Institute calculated that the true cost of ObamaCare would exceed $6 trillion, after the various deceits used to make it seem close to revenue-neutral are stripped away. How much does real estate in the “middle ground” of such outrageous spending cost? Three trillion? When a radical program of such massive size is proposed, anything less than determined opposition is equivalent to submission.

I appreciate Goldberg’s point about the kind of muddled, confusing, and ultimately ineffective legislation produced by the quest for the middle ground. However, I wonder how truly desirable these uncompromising contests between capitalism and socialism are. Aren’t elected officials, especially Congress and the President, supposed to represent all of their constituents? Wouldn’t that mean listening to the concerns of both liberals and conservatives, and trying to craft legislation that satisfies both sides to some degree? Are the members of a winning political coalition supposed to have absolute power to do whatever they want, even if they won with only about half the popular vote, while the other side sits in obedient silence until their next chance at the ballot box?

In the course of endorsing a Dick Cheney run for the Presidency in 2012, Jon Meacham of Newsweek writes:

One of the problems with governance since the election of Bill Clinton has been the resolute refusal of the opposition party (the GOP from 1993 to 2001, the Democrats from 2001 to 2009, and now the GOP again in the Obama years) to concede that the president, by virtue of his victory, has a mandate to take the country in a given direction.

I don’t think most Americans are under the impression they’re voting for a dictator every four years. Bill Clinton won the Presidency with a mere 43% of the popular vote. What sort of “mandate” did that give him to “take the country in a given direction?”

Of course, we cannot parcel out presidential powers based on the scale of the candidate’s electoral victory. The proper functioning of our government, and the harmony of our democracy, demand that we acknowledge the full legitimacy of the man or woman who sits in the Oval Office. The Left did their country no favors by bitterly dragging the 2000 elections out until 2008. The complementary aspect of this principle is that strong electoral victories cannot logically yield enhanced “mandates” to take the country in various radical directions. If close elections don’t produce miniature Presidents who just keep the seat warm until the next election, then landslide victories don’t produce super-Presidents with turbocharged authority. A President who carries 49 states, and wins 70% of the popular vote, is not entitled to stuff the opposing 30% of the electorate in the trunk and take America out for a joy ride.

The Declaration of Independence states that governments derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed.” The American understanding of democracy does not envision voters as slaves who enjoy the privilege of voting for a new master every few years. When the Declaration speaks of the right – and, later the duty – of the people to abolish tyrannical governments, it renders the notion of “mandates” to impose radical change on unwilling citizens absurd.

The vital role of consent in the structure of a just government is one of the most powerful ideas ever advanced by the human race. On the other hand, the belief that consent can be manufactured by democratic majorities is one of the most cherished illusions of activist government. The dissent of a minority is not rendered irrelevant by victory in a popular vote… but the health-care debate in the Senate proceeds on the assumption that victory in a parliamentary struggle between a hundred elected officials will compel the consent of the millions of citizens – now a sizable majority of the population, based on the latest polls – who strenuously object to ObamaCare. If Senate Democrats win this debate, huge amounts of your liberty will be destroyed, and vast sums of money will be seized from taxpayers… and you will not be allowed to object. Any attempt to withhold your consent from this economy-shattering, life-changing radical legislation will end with you sitting in a prison cell.

The consent of the governed cannot be expressed solely through a semi-annual vote for elected representatives. It can only be respected by placing strict limits on what those representatives can vote for. Some would argue that requiring the consent of the entire population to authorize massive government programs would effectively render those programs impossible, because 100% agreement is virtually impossible to achieve. Exactly. The entire apparatus of socialist government is a Constitutional violation that would never receive the total support of those who are controlled by its regulations, or compelled to pay for its agenda. For this reason, its agenda should never even reach the serious discussion stage, never mind legislative implementation.

Americans concerned about the size of their government should not be forced into a permanent defensive posture against an endless series of aggressive initiatives. If the needs and desires of some can transcend the liberty of others, then liberty itself is a meaningless concept. Freedom is not what you have left after everyone else is finished making demands of you. The need for your consent is not respected when your only hope of withholding it lies in historic midterm electoral victories and the rapid construction of huge Congressional majorities. The patriots who declared their independence from England perceived an essential truth about the nature of just government, which we have become almost afraid to contemplate.

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The Makers of Money

Friday, November 27, 2009

A businessman of my acquaintance once interrupted a conversation about economic cycles to proclaim, “Good times, bad times, it doesn’t matter. I always make money.” His company had the balance sheet to back up this claim, and as the old saying goes, it ain’t boasting if you can do it. I’ve often reflected on that conversation over the years, because it helped me to understand something important about the struggle between the public and private sectors.

Every nation has a mixture of rich people, poor people, and some form of middle class. There is some degree of circulation between these economic groups. A poor worker might earn enough to advance into the lower middle class, while a middle-class professional could become rich… or suffer a reversal of fortune that leaves him in poverty. This basic situation exists under every form of government, from free-market capitalism to fascist dictatorships. What changes under different systems is the composition of the upper class, and the size of the lower and middle classes.

Collectivists sell their politics with a promise of “equality,” generally understood by their audience as a promise to redistribute the wealth of the rich to improve the lives of the poor… but this is a lie. The upper class in a communist, fascist, or socialist government is fantastically wealthy. Most of the “redistribution” comes at the expense of the middle class, which shrinks as the lower class grows. Every form of collectivist government, including twenty-first century American socialism, declares war on the middle class, or tries to lure them into submission with promises of benefits.

The middle class provides most of the funding for Big Government, and feels the pinch of high taxes more than rich people, who can often find ways to avoid them. A ten percent loss of income hits people struggling to make car payments much harder than it hits millionaires. The middle class inevitably grows tired of being milked for funding, responds quickly to economic downturns that compromise its lifestyle, and has enough voting power to destroy political parties.

Socialists love to posture as enemies of the rich, but in truth, the upper class is not usually a big obstacle to their plans. They are happy to cooperate willingly, if they see advantages to gaining the favor of a command economy. They can profit from government policies that hurt smaller competitors much more than they hurt the biggest of the big dogs, or restrict access to markets where they already dominate.

The rich often find themselves rewarded with official power under a collectivist government, smoothy transitioning from respected businessmen into honored members of the ruling Party, or government consultants. Sometimes the upper class finds the thrill of power, and the indulgence of their ego, well worth a few million lost in the rusty gears of a contracting statist economy. If worst comes to worst, the collectivists know that the rich are a small group with little voting power, easily overwhelmed at the polls by an aroused population.

The desperately poor are generally reliable supporters of socialist politics. Someone who pays no taxes will understandably tend to support endless expansion of government benefits. Eventually, members of the working poor may come to realize their own prospects suffer when too much economic damage is sustained by those who employ them. It follows that high rates of long-term unemployment will generally increase the size of the dependency class, which produces more political rewards for statists who promise hefty government benefits… and extracting resources from the economy to pay for those benefits causes the economy to contract further, producing more unemployment.  Unemployment is a malignant tumor.

Who are the rich? With a few trust-fund, sports, and Hollywood exceptions, the rich are people like that businessman of my acquaintance: they always make money. It has been said that if you gathered all the money in America into a single pot, then divided it evenly between every citizen, in a few years the same people would be rich and poor again. No matter how limited or activist the government might be, the same people tend to end up at the top. The most dramatic changes occur in the middle and lower classes… the people who don’t always make money. They can’t evade higher taxes, or turn draconian government regulations to their advantage. They depend on economic growth to produce jobs for them, or create the conditions necessary for them to launch profitable small businesses.

Collectivist politicians have much to gain by increasing the size of the dependency class. The fundamental political purpose of State-controlled health care is to transform much of the middle class into the lower class. The economic damage from spending trillions of dollars on a monstrous new government program in the middle of a recession is a feature, not a bug. A middle class dependent on the benevolence of the State for its health care will become less troublesome, less independent, and less able to begin the climb into the upper class through small business formation. Fewer small businesses means fewer working poor rising into the middle class.

To liberals who are not politicians, but involved citizens who sincerely care about their less fortunate neighbors, I would say that the temptation to redistribute from the rich to the poor is the tragic pursuit of a mirage. You will never draw real blood from the makers of money, and even if you could, it would never be enough to purchase “social justice.”  Redistribution always slides from the middle class to the poor… and the result is, inevitably, more poverty plus a smaller middle class. Look at how the stock market fluctuates under the current Administration, while unemployment remains high. The markets can adjust and recover, because they are filled with people who always find ways to make money. When circumstances force those people to employ strategies that do not promote job growth and capital formation, the livelihood of the middle class suffers, and the ambitions of the working poor drop dead.

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Giving Thanks To The Necessary Men

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

It’s traditional to welcome the Thanksgiving holiday by expressing gratitude for the great people in our lives. I had a sizable list of such sentiments prepared for a Thanksgiving essay, but last night I set it aside. Recent events have given me two specific expressions of gratitude to focus on.

First, thank God for the Navy SEALs accused of punching out that Iraqi terrorist.

Soldiers have to follow the rules of engagement. The discipline of our soldiers is one of the things that makes them so vastly superior, both operationally and morally, to the terrorist murderers they’re fighting. However, the pursuit of discipline can pass from the realm of common sense, and become a fetish. Common sense tells us that fighting an enemy  defined by its refusal to honor any rules of conduct, or standards of human decency, will require us to get a little dirty. Navy SEALs are not cops, and al-Qaeda terrorists are not street criminals. The refusal to understand this simple truth produces a cognitive dissonance that will soon blossom into a lunatic circus, in the courtrooms of New York. Soldiers in the field cannot afford that kind of dissonance. The civilian command owes them the logic and dignity of setting rules of engagement that sane men can follow.

What is needed, in our appraisal of military actions, is a sense of proportion. Even if the fat lip of that Iraqi terrorist is definitively traced back to a Navy fist, the idea that we might pull vitally needed special operators out of the field over something like this is insane. If our system of discipline and military justice would threaten the careers of these SEALs because they punched a terrorist they had every right to vaporize, the problem is with the system, not the SEALs.

Very few men have what it takes to become members of special forces units. I had lunch with a SEAL a couple of years ago, and based on what he was allowed to tell me, I sure as hell couldn’t do it. My sleep is untroubled by this knowledge, because it says more about him than it says about me. Every soldier in the field is the product of dedication and courage multiplied by training. Those who make it through special forces training have succeeded where plenty of good men gave honorable efforts that didn’t quite make the grade. SEAL training is not like public school, where everybody gets a B as long as they show up at least half the time, and remember all the words to the Obama worship song. You can be a fine man of extraordinary courage and superhuman will, and still wash out before graduation.

This doesn’t mean we should give valuable special forces soldiers free reign to do whatever they want. I’ve never met a single military man who thinks we should. It does mean we should view their actions with care, and give them the benefit of the doubt… and I don’t mind saying I’ve got plenty of doubt about anything said by anyone affiliated with al-Qaeda. Even if the Iraqi terrorist is telling the truth about getting punched out, treating the SEALs as if they had randomly opened fire on the Baghdad peewee soccer team is ridiculous. At the dinner table of warfare, eating your salad with the wrong fork is not the same as stuffing the turkey with a live grenade.

SEALs belong on dangerous beaches. Terrorists belong somewhere other than civilian courtrooms. If civilian support for these SEALs can help to restore sanity and protect their careers, I offer mine without hesitation or reservation.

My second Thanksgiving blessing is for Allahpundit.

Allahpundit is the reason I know what blogging is. A friend sent me a link to his blog during the 2004 presidential campaign. I devoured every post he had written, then found Ace of Spades through his blogroll, and ended the evening in tears of laughter after reading Ace’s thoughts on which D&D character would be played by each of the Democratic presidential hopefuls. I remember visiting Allah’s old blog site after he abandoned it, disappointed that nothing new would appear.

I disagree with his take on many issues. In fact, I guess I’ve ended up with the exact opposite opinion, as often as not. I really hate the notion that total agreement is required to find someone’s writing interesting, or that supporting someone’s position on a single issue means complete solidarity with everything they ever write. I wouldn’t want anyone reading this to believe their only options are complete agreement with me, or absolute contempt.

I’m not going to challenge anyone’s anger over the post Allahpundit wrote on the Navy SEAL situation. People are entitled to their feelings, and getting mad at people for being angry creates the kind of whirlpool that swiftly drowns reason. I’m not going to defend Allah either, because he doesn’t need me for that. I will say that I don’t see the point of choosing insults when reason is available. I’ve learned a lot by reading the responses to Allah’s post from active and retired military people.

I write as often as I can, and hope to post four or five times a week. Allahpundit cranks out more than twice that much in a single day, sometimes within minutes of a major event. Is it unreasonable to make generous allowances for error on such a blistering schedule, for a perspective offered in real time? Besides, what’s more stimulating than a well-written opinion you disagree with, prompting your own heartfelt response? A lot of my essays began that way, because Allahpundit got there first. I never understood the point of mocking him as an “Eeyore.” Nothing makes my optimism flare up faster than a dose of someone else’s pessimism. Look at it this way: if you have to take the Hundred Acre Woods gang through SEAL training and lead them on a mission, you’re going to trust Eeyore with the explosives. You’re certainly not going to let Tigger carry them. That’s just crazy talk.

Anyone who finds merit in anything I have written should consider that you probably wouldn’t have read it, had I not followed the trail Allahpundit laid to Hot Air. In this place, among its remarkable writers and amazing readers, I have discovered something of great importance to my life: a joy I can only hope to receive with proper humility. I have Ed, Michelle, and Allahpundit to thank for this opportunity. I spent far too much of last night listening to one of those people called a douchebag.

Napoleon Bonaparte is said to have become irritated when told he was “necessary,” because the necessary men are the first ones lined up and shot after a crisis passes. We should treat them better than that. I know he’s an atheist, but I hope somehow, tomorrow evening… as he roasts his turkey over a pile of flaming Yankees fungo bats, and a quivering Humpbot plugs in its carving knife accessory… Allahpundit hears the toast I plan to raise in his name. Well, his alias. I hope the one I raise to you reaches your heart, as well.

Happy Thanksgiving!

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The Third Party Moment

Monday, November 23, 2009

Two spectacular book-signing tours by prominent conservative figures are currently in progress: Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck. They share many of the same ideas about the decay of the American system, and how to reverse it, but one striking difference is their approach to the Republican Party. Palin wants to revive the party, while Beck has already taken a seat on its death panel. In Florida on Sunday, he gave a speech calling for an end to the two-party system, and has often spoken of the futility of counting on the Republican Party for any meaningful assistance in rescuing America from socialism.

The confusion and weariness of the Republicans doesn’t automatically mean the third-party moment has arrived. It’s possible to be fed up with the GOP, but still opposed to investing serious energy in the formation of an alternative party. I don’t disagree with most of Beck’s criticisms of the Republicans, but I favor Palin’s approach to reforming them, instead of abandoning them. For me, the third-party moment will be one of absolute despair, aimed more at salvaging the remains of a broken country than averting disaster. It will be more about resurrection than reformation.

The current environment is one of peril, not despair. The Republicans have improved their game considerably since the dark days of 2006, partially due to the dead wood cleaned out in a couple of bad election cycles. They’ve maintained a respectable amount of discipline in the House and Senate votes against the Democratic health-care takeover. People like John Boehner and Jim DeMint have displayed intelligence, leadership, and parliamentary skill. When even Lindsay Graham can tap into the ring and put Obama’s Attorney General on the mat with the Soft On Terrorism Suplex, it’s tough to declare the party completely devoid of energy and courage.

The most ardent critics of the GOP say that its worst elements outweigh its best – the RINOs and disguised Democrats in the lower decks will always sink the ship, no matter who takes the helm. When the Republicans give in to their worst instincts, a little tough love is called for, as we saw in the recent New York District 23 race. Conservative insurgent Doug Hoffman didn’t lose because he leaned too far to the right. He lost largely because of backstabbing from masked Democrat Deedee Scozzafava, a lack of campaign funding and organization, and some perceived weakness on local issues… all things a faithful Republican Party could have helped him with, if they weren’t busy weaving a million dollars of Scozzafava campaign money into a noose for themselves.

Hoffman wasn’t trying to destroy the GOP. He wanted to run as its candidate, and he lose because the party failed him. If Hoffman runs again, with the money and political assistance of the Republican Party behind him in 2010, he’ll win. If the party cruises ACORN ballot-stuffing parties, looking for another union organizer’s wife to put on the ticket, they’ll lose. We’ll soon find out if they learned their lesson.

Talk of building a new party to escape the RINOs is akin to talk about secession to escape from disastrous liberal policies: how do you keep the same people from migrating into your new party or nation-state, and starting the whole miserable process again? How does a third party of conservative purity defeat both the Democrats, and the enraged rump of an embittered Republican Party bent on revenge? If you think the media gives disproportionate attention to liberal Republicans now, just wait until it can use them as clubs to beat the Third Party… a mission those liberal Republicans will gladly volunteer for. As the NY-23 race showed, it’s better to defeat the Republican left from within the party, rather than give the Democrats ringside seats at a Conservatives vs. Republicans smackdown.

I’ve always wondered how a conservative movement that essentially concedes defeat against liberal Republicans, and withdraws from the party, could expect to defeat the much larger and more powerful Democrat Party. If we can’t handle Olympia Snowe swooning before “the call of history,” I don’t like our chances against the guy on the other end of the line.

Glenn Beck’s call for dissolving the two-party system is unlikely to make any headway, because one of those two parties has no intention of dissolving. The Democrat coalition has its fault lines and bitter rivalries, but they are united in defending the growth of the State. The members of that coalition are willing to set aside their differences to support increasing the size of government as an inherently desirable goal, then fight among themselves for influence within the immense government they have created. The challenge for conservatives is to reach the independents and moderates who orbit the fringe of the Democrat coalition, and show them why their faith in Big Government is misplaced. At the same time, they must provide a coherent philosophy that can unite those who already mistrust Big Government. A Third Party wrapped up in a messy divorce from the GOP would not be in a stronger position to do either of those things.

A political party is a mixture of money, tradition, and political machinery. The two major American parties have been brewing for a long time, accumulating assets that would not be easily replaced or duplicated. The Republican Party, for all its flaws, is a valuable instrument for conservatism. Changing the attitude of the people who control the party will be a less formidable task than persuading the rest of the nation without it. Glenn Beck says that his goal is to reform government by changing the hearts and minds of the people who vote it into existence. If he can accomplish even a fraction of that goal, he won’t have to worry about creating an alternative to the Republican Party.

Meanwhile, middle-class voters are tired of being dismissed as mindlessly angry white people by sneering journalists. They want someone who understands their concerns to express them with eloquence and passion, giving them a voice that would never be willingly provided by a partisan media culture. That’s why they like Sarah Palin so much. Her remarkable journey took her completely outside a party apparatus that was already polishing its alibis and planning how to dispose of her remains, even as it demanded the impossible from her last year. More of the GOP establishment should try “going rogue,” and finding the party’s future in the vast crowds waiting to get Palin and Beck to sign their books. The Republican Party is America’s home team, in the contest to re-define its essence. By the time we could replace them with another team, we’d be playing an entirely different game.

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Tapping the Golden Vein

Friday, November 20, 2009

Centuries ago, at the beginning of the Obama Administration, we were told that the “obscene” bonuses of AIG executives should be taxed away, with special taxes that amounted to bills of attainder. This is not the first time we’ve seen specific industries targeted with massive taxes because they were deemed immoral. The outstanding example is the tobacco industry, which the government uses as a trained vampire, sending it forth to suck tax revenue from the lungs of smokers. Big Oil gets soaked with a lot of taxes, too, justified in part by the merciless profiteering and environmental disdain of its chief executives. Of course, Big Tobacco and Big Oil still make money, but the government makes more from their products than they do.

One industry has thus far been able to escape punitive taxation, despite routinely employing shadowy accounting practices, spending fantastic amounts of money, and reaping obscene profits. It produces a product that often causes significant damage to the social environment. It raises its price to the consumer relentlessly, with no measurable increase in quality. Top employees can rake in $20 million or more in a single year, while frequently maintaining foreign residences to escape high tax rates. They often extract fat paychecks from their companies, even when their failures cost the company staggering amounts of money. While it generates much of its income in the United States, it’s one of the worst industries for outsourcing jobs overseas.

It’s time to tap the last untouched golden vein in the American economic bloodstream. Let’s tax the crap out of Hollywood.

Hollywood actors are generally outspoken in support of “social justice,” so they shouldn’t mind picking up the tab. Will Ferrell, recently named Hollywood’s most overpaid actor by Forbes, is an aggressive advocate of socialized medicine – but strangely enough, he hasn’t used any of his millions to buy insurance for the poor. We can change that with some carefully targeted taxes. After pulling in $20 million a pop for a string of lousy movies, Ferrell is Salvation Army kettle full of undeserved loot just waiting to be rolled into the soup kitchens.

Canadian actor Jim Carrey railed against “personal greed” after collecting millions to record the voice of Scrooge in this year’s computer-animated A Christmas Carol. Carrey’s not dumb enough to submit himself to the wonders of Canadian health care or economic policy, but he thinks you should. We could help him overcome his bad feelings about personal greed by grabbing seventy or eighty percent of his huge fortune, and using that money to fund emergency medical services for the poor.

Let’s just ponder Michael Moore for a moment, and move on.

Big-name actors aren’t the only sources of golden fleece in Hollywood. Studio executives could teach the Enron crowd a few things about creative accounting. They spend gigantic amounts of money on awful big-budget “tentpole” films, while some of the biggest hits in recent years were modestly-budgeted movies like The Hangover, District 9, Paranormal Activity, and the Twilight films, to name a few titles from this MSNBC article. Those huge budgets obviously aren’t buying proportional amounts of quality.

Hollywood is a source of both social and political corruption. Its movies are often toxic waste thrown in the faces of parents trying to raise their children with decent values. Its stars and directors gain disproportionate influence within the Democrat party, and relentlessly shove their politics into the faces of their audience. They’re certainly entitled to their opinions, but perhaps a little fiscal restraint would focus them more on the business of entertaining, and give them less money and idle time for proselytizing.

Why should actors and directors be the super-wealthy patrician class of America, gazing down upon toiling masses they claim to speak for, but scarcely understand? Why should the guy who brought you Land of the Lost be hauling in twenty times the loot of a top surgeon, brilliant inventor, or hard-working businessman?

You might wonder if our entertainer-monarchs would give us the same level of performance, after we began confiscating their huge salaries. The price controls and fee limits on medicine in the Democrats’ health-care proposals assume doctors will provide the same care and effort if their incomes are controlled, so why wouldn’t actors? They constantly claim to have a high degree of devotion to their art, so wouldn’t they give their best even if we limited them to a handsome upper-middle-class lifestyle? And would the cinematic arts really suffer if some of the dreary, overpaid Hollywood elite stopped appearing in all our movies, making way for more young talent that would be overjoyed to receive a mere five or six-figure paycheck?

I can see nothing but upsides to dropping massive new taxes and regulation on Hollywood. To those who object that I’m supposed to be a champion of free markets… well, I am. But why should Hollywood be the last one?

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How Do You Solve This Problem Without Sarah?

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Newsweek advertised its cover story on the release of Sarah Palin’s “Going Rogue” by asking, “How do you solve a problem like Sarah?” This headline was informed by the same journalistic standards that led the Washington Post to publish a book review by someone who admits she didn’t read the book – and then prompted MSNBC to invite this person on the air as an expert on the book she didn’t read. Newsweek apparently couldn’t be bothered to watch “The Sound of Music” all the way through, because Maria is the hero of the piece. The nuns singing “How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?” are singing about suppressing the very spirit that will help Maria save her family from totalitarian oppression. Considering Palin’s indestructible good cheer, if she runs for office again, I wouldn’t be surprised if she used “How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?” as a campaign song… and thanked Newsweek for the suggestion.

The media has treated Palin’s book like the mirrored scroll from “Kung Fu Panda”: every reviewer sees themselves reflected in its pages. Imagine a mainstream news magazine trying to portray any liberal woman as a lightweight, by using a photo of her in running shorts to tease its review of her major new book. Running a book review by someone who admits to skipping the last third of the book is not an insult to Sarah Palin, who was not writing for an audience of lazy media hacks. It’s an insult to the audience… including liberal readers of the Washington Post with the intellectual clarity to desire an understanding of those who eagerly devoured every single page. Palin is a phenomenon, and honest liberals would be well-advised to read her work and understand her appeal, just as conservatives should read “Dreams From My Father” to understand the mind of Bill Ayers.

The careless, sloppy disdain of the Left’s reaction to “Going Rogue” is almost as strong an argument for Palin’s politics as anything contained within its pages. The absolute lack of care and competence from the government that ran up a $12 trillion national debt is astonishing. Months of dithering over Afghanistan strategy, with American troops under fire, ends with a painfully unqualified Commander-in-Chief wailing that he wants a new set of options. The politicization of national defense ends in the absurd spectacle of a civilian trial for illegal enemy combatants… subcontracting national security to trial lawyers, and a randomly-selected pool of 12 people who never heard of 9/11.

The lunatic environmentalist movement, which is poised to push the American economy into a full-bore depression with its cap-and-trade bill, is headed by a man who admitted on national television that he thinks the Earth’s core is hotter than the surface of a white dwarf star. The same elite that despises Sarah Palin as an ignorant chillbilly spent the last twenty years telling us this man is a genius.

The national debt is piling up like sales of Palin’s book, and the elite don’t understand how either of them got so huge. Taxpayers are trapped on a Willy Wonka boat, hurtling through psychedelic clouds of uncontrolled spending, while the President sits in the back and mumbles nonsense rhymes about imaginary jobs created in non-existent Congressional districts. The people lining up to buy Palin’s book are not the authors of this careless, carnivorous government… but they are expected to pay for it. The assertion that someone who connects with them, and understands their beliefs, is unwelcome on the national stage is just the latest variation of “Shut up and pay your taxes.” No one should accept that attitude from a government as incompetent as the journalists who fawn over it.

The argument over whether Sarah Palin is “qualified” for the presidency is the opposite of the question conservatives should be asking. What we need to know is whether any other aspiring candidate has the essential qualifications Palin brings to the table.

The tax-and-spend engine of collectivist government is locked into overdrive, and it’s going to blow very soon – perhaps within the term of Barack Obama’s successor, if dramatic steps are not taken. There’s very little point in supporting a presidential candidate who won’t take those dramatic steps, and that means we need someone who can connect with ordinary people, including moderates and independents, and persuade them to lend their support. Pandering to the uncommitted is tantamount to taking the bridge of a sinking ship, but refusing to touch the wheel. The challenges ahead require not just a victory, but a mandate, and you can’t get a mandate by trying to appear inoffensive to moderates, in the hope they’ll reluctantly bring up the rear of your campaign once you’re already winning.

Most voters are not ideologues. They don’t follow politics obsessively, and they probably haven’t given much thought to a coherent philosophy of government… but they respond to one when they see it. It takes provocative energy to reach them through the media filter, and convince them to spare a little time from their busy lives to entertain reasoned arguments. Attempts to persuade them without inspiring them are like winning cases presented in dry whispers before an empty courtroom. A platform of small discounts on our $12 trillion government will not make enough of a difference to be worth the effort. There was never a good time for Democrat Lite politicians, but they have become a mistake we can no longer afford.

It’s an ironic twist of democracy that small, passionate groups cannot get Presidents elected, without appeals to the broader electorate… but they can lock in outrageous spending programs, by savagely resisting attempts to cancel or reform them. The single-minded energy that repels voters is irresistible to politicians. The focused appetite of those on the receiving end of government billions will always be more influential than the diffuse annoyance of taxpayers… unless a reformist President continues to inspire, and persuade, after assuming the office. Maintaining that kind of connection with the voters requires conviction, courage, confidence, and boundless good cheer. It’s a job for someone who can take a beating, and never lose faith in the American people… long after a sizable chunk of them have put that faith to the test.

I hope many candidates step forward with these qualifications, especially since Sarah Palin hasn’t declared any intention to run for office again. Even if she does, it would be best to have a spirited competition between worthy nominees. Neither Republicans, nor the republic, have been well-served by “inevitable” candidates. Taming a berserk government will be a matter of politics, as much as policy, requiring both intelligent plans and the spirit to implement them. Some of the qualifications we should be looking for are difficult to quantify as bullet points on a resume. Those people standing in the freezing cold, happily awaiting the signature of an author who ignores every attempt to pronounce her dead, on a book the entire media establishment told them to ignore, might have an idea where to find what we need.

The question before conservatives is not whether Sarah Palin can win. The question is: at this desperate hour, what’s the point of winning without someone like her?

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The Mechanics of Virtue

Monday, November 16, 2009

Yesterday I explained my belief that the social aspects of conservatism are essential to its success, in part because collectivist politics are presented as a passionate moral argument. It’s not hard to understand why many people will support policies that are wasteful or inefficient, if they believe opposing such policies is immoral. I would wager that every fiscal conservative has seen a perfectly logical argument against Big Government activism drowned out in a familiar wail of anguish: “But we’ve got to do something!” No one should be surprised that much of the human race believes moral considerations outweigh practical ones.

Social conservatives, on the other hand, should understand both the moral and practical arguments for limited-government fiscal conservatism. Liberty and capitalism are the mechanics of virtue, through which moral ends can best be achieved.

It’s common to hear people describe themselves as “fiscally conservative but socially liberal.” There are plenty of people who hold the opposite set of beliefs. George W. Bush’s “compassionate conservatism” was an attempt to marry Big Government spending with traditional social goals. The Religious Left doesn’t get as much negative media attention as the Religious Right, but a large number of people sincerely believe their faith requires them to support massive government welfare programs. Many of those who founded the Progressive movement, the precursor to modern welfare state liberalism, justified their politics on social and religious grounds. President Woodrow Wilson was very energetic in expressing his belief in the religious mandate of Progressive politics. Today, many of the same people who rail endlessly against the incipient theocracy of the Religious Right are quite happy to watch the Democrats treat black churches as union halls with better music and stricter dress codes.

Not all socially conservative people are religious, of course, but it would be silly to overlook the sizable overlap between religious faith and traditionally conservative social attitudes. The Constitution speaks strongly in favor of respecting religious faith, which by extension must include the absence of religious faith. The government is prohibited from interfering with the free exercise of religion, or establishing a State religion. Those who honor the genius of the Constitution should understand the importance of embracing its respect for the religious beliefs of others, from Pentecostals to atheists. If reflexively dismissing an idea because it was born through religious inspiration is wrong, and irrational, it follows that ideas should also be granted due consideration when they have entirely secular origins.

Social conservatives should listen to the warnings of fiscal conservatives, and resist the temptation to harness the power of Big Government for moral purposes. In the end, Big Government will inevitably turn against them. Confiscatory tax policy, intrusive regulations on personal behavior, and income redistribution are sins against the liberty of free people, unsuitable as the foundation of a moral society. Those who expect virtue from a thief who promises to donate some of his loot to charity are bound to be disappointed.

Anyone with a sincere concern for the well-being of the poor should measure the economic weakness of heavily regulated command economies against the vitality and wealth of capitalism.  Nothing does more to improve the lives of the poor than the innovation and competition of capitalism. Free-market breakthroughs in technology, production, and distribution – making essentials like food and medicine cheaper and better – have produced more real improvements in the lives of the poor than every socialist welfare program ever created. The moral implication of the Laffer curve, which I mentioned yesterday, is that the willing charity of a prosperous nation is worth far more than the thin blood of a stagnant and corrupt collectivist state.

The engine of taxes and regulations opposed by fiscal conservatives is like a massive computer system that becomes self-aware. No matter what noble intentions guided its creators, when it reaches a certain size, it begins acting in its own self-interest… and its interests do not parallel those of social conservatives. The behaviors encouraged and required by Big Government are not consistent with faith, tradition, or self-reliance. It’s no coincidence that every collectivist government, from socialists to fascists and communists, acts to eliminate the competition to its authority from these areas. You’ll find no exceptions in the annals of history.

At the gargantuan level of the modern state, economic policy shapes moral behavior. Name a social pathology, and it grew worse under the New Deal and Great Society. Twenty years of Lyndon Johnson’s socialism unleashed a tidal wave of crime, dependence and broken homes that might take a century for the most dedicated efforts of social conservatives to drain away… if it can be done at all. Consider that the black families destroyed by these socialist policies were among the most religious demographics in America. The economic liberty championed by fiscal conservatives is the most effective tool available for restoring the moral fiber dissolved by the welfare state.

The citizens of a massive central State will always find themselves competing with its judgment on moral issues. Most laws are expressions of morality, so a large government that creates many laws is imposing many moral judgments on its citizens. This is especially true in the case of children, whose moral development is a keen interest of the State. Those who argue about issues like prayer in school are missing the point: your children are already praying in school, according to the religious doctrine of radical environmentalism. They are being taught to sing hymns to political figures favored by the party of the education establishment. The only way to “get religion out of the classroom” is to break down the public school monopoly, and let parents decide what sort of prayers and hymns their children will learn.

The limited central government envisioned by fiscal conservatives will return power to states and communities, where individuals can have more influence over local community standards, and the freedom to live in communities that represent their beliefs. A social conservative who is confident in the power of his beliefs has no reason to fear such a competition. It won’t be easy – competition never is – but at least conservatives won’t be squabbling over control of a central government that generally works against them. Indeed, the struggle for control of such a government compromises the morality of the contestants… no matter how pure their original intentions were. Fiscal conservatives, who refuse to define “freedom” as one vote for the leadership of a monstrous State that seeks control over every aspect of our lives, can explain why no one emerges from that struggle innocent, or victorious.

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The Essential Fusion

Sunday, November 15, 2009

Ed Morrissey relayed an interesting quote from Democrat representative Carol Shea-Porter of New Hampshire earlier today:

“I think when you can pay for insurance, you must,” said Shea-Porter. “For those who are blessed to have insurance through their companies, they should keep it.”

Those who are blessed to have insurance through their companies? You might have thought your health insurance was part of your compensation, following a pattern set by decades-old wage controls which obliged companies to offer benefit packages to attract skilled workers. According to Congresswoman Shea-Porter, that health insurance is actually a divine blessing, like having a good singing voice. By extension, this would make the people who don’t have insurance through their companies cursed.

This is more than just a linguistic quirk. Democrats speak often of those who “win life’s lottery,” insinuating their wealth is not their hard-earned property, to which they have an absolute right. Instead, it’s pennies from heaven, and we should spare no pity for those who would catch an umbrella full of those pennies and scurry off to indulge their greed, while others are left to suffer. Those who believe government has a duty to “spread the wealth around” find it essential to compromise the idea that wealth belongs to those who earn it. Ownership is the truth that must be buried before theft can put on its Sunday best and introduce itself as “redistribution.”

Congresswoman Shea-Porter’s remarks are just the latest in a series of incidents that remind me why I become restless when social and fiscal conservatives argue. The philosophy of conservatism cannot be adequately expressed without the fusion of its moral and economic arguments.  I’ve spoken with a number of liberals who became conservatives, and they rarely cite the fiscal arguments of conservatism as the reason they switched.  I would imagine people who become more liberal over time say the same thing.  Neither side seems to win many converts with its pie charts.

A strictly financial argument for conservatism never makes much progress with the electorate, because liberalism is presented as an explicitly moral enterprise. This is one of the big reasons it is never held to account for its practical failures. Every liberal talks up the latest huge expansion of the government as if the year is 1909, rather than 2009, and the ideas he advocates haven’t been proven disasters around the globe. Collectivist agriculture yields starvation, the trillion-dollar War on Poverty produces more poverty, political control of industries crashes those industries… and yet, it’s always Day One of the great socialist experiment, and no one has every hit on the brilliant idea of making the “rich” pay their “fair share” to fund a government crusade against want.

This increasingly stale series of fresh starts is not merely a cynical attempt to keep the population from challenging liberal ideas, by exploiting the case of historical amnesia it gained by slamming its collective head into the public school system. Confronted with the grim history of their ideology, most liberals will say it doesn’t matter if their ideas are efficient, because there is a moral imperative to follow them, and all opposition to them is fundamentally immoral. It doesn’t matter that liberalism doesn’t work, because it’s the right thing to do… the only right thing to do.

Consider the liberal reaction to the concept of the Laffer curve, described in detail here by Arthur Laffer himself. To put it simply, the Laffer curve explains that high taxes produce less revenue for the government than expected, because people change their behavior to avoid the taxes… and many of these behavioral changes result in an overall weakening of the economy, reducing the size of the economic pie government is trying to cut itself a slice of. This is why both Kennedy and Reagan increased revenue to the Treasury by cutting taxes. Young liberals try to deny the objective reality of the Kennedy and Reagan tax cuts, and become very confused and upset when shown the hard data. Old liberals are smart enough not to argue with the data. They just say it doesn’t matter, because steep progressive taxation is morally correct, and “tax cuts for the rich” are absolutely immoral – regardless of their net effect on government revenue.

One of the reasons liberals always sound so foolish when they discuss economics is their belief that moral certainty trumps objective knowledge. In his infamous encounter with Joe the Plumber, Barack Obama expressed it like this:

It’s not that I want to punish your success. I just want to make sure that everybody who is behind you, that they’ve got a chance at success, too… My attitude is that if the economy’s good for folks from the bottom up, it’s gonna be good for everybody. If you’ve got a plumbing business, you’re gonna be better off… if you’ve got a whole bunch of customers who can afford to hire you, and right now everybody’s so pinched that business is bad for everybody and I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.

In other words, the lot of underemployed plumbers will improve when the government seizes a huge amount of money from the wealthy, keeps a large portion for itself, and distributes the remainder to poor people, some of whom will doubtless use their welfare money to hire plumbers. Keep this logic in mind the next time some fossilized liberal makes a crack about “trickle-down economics.”

The part of the conservative movement broadly defined as “social” is essential to defeating the moral argument of the Left. Electoral victory requires persuading moderate and independent voters, and even some liberals who are still open-minded enough to give the other side a hearing. Such persuasion is impossible without a compelling moral argument, because conservatism does not seem coherent without it. Say what you will about the fundamental argument of collectivism, but you can’t deny it’s simple and consistent: give us your vote and we will take care of you, at the expense of people whose greed is worthy of your hatred.

The difficulty faced by a strictly fiscal expression of conservatism can be seen in way Republican health care proposals have difficulty gaining traction. The recent House Republican proposal was given a $61 billion price tag by the Congressional Budget Office – something like 6% of the cost for the Democrats’ delirious $3 trillion fantasy. It’s a fine expression of fiscal conservatism… but without the accompanying moral argument against socialized medicine, it won’t amount to much beyond a group of well-meaning Republicans clearing their throats, tapping stacks of paper on their desks, and wondering why no one is paying attention to them.

The ideas of the Left are both ineffective and immoral. They are not strictly economic proposals. Economics affect society, an idea the Left currently understands much better than the Right. When the State achieves the massive size of our federal government – and has cocooned itself in preparation for the metamorphosis into something incalculably larger – the difference between fiscal and social policy evaporates. What is the point of claiming to be “fiscally conservative and socially liberal” when the State controls so much of your life, and asserts first claim on so much of your income… which is another way of saying it has first claim on the majority of your time?

I have always thought the embrace of liberty is the key ingredient to achieving the essential fusion between social and fiscal conservatism. I sympathize with most of the goals expressed by social conservatives. I don’t believe they can achieve those goals by imposing them through the power of a massive central State, the way liberalism has done for decades. They should see that State as an offense against the moral imperative of liberty, and relish the challenge of fighting their battles locally, after regaining the freedom we never should have been foolish enough to surrender. Collectivism is premised on the absence of respect for fellow citizens – they must be compelled to follow the collective agenda, or cared for by the State because they’re too feeble to survive without it. Both social and fiscal conservatism can meet on the common ground of liberty, which demands respect for fellow citizens. This does not require social conservatives to abandon the notion of community standards. Instead, it means they must respect the decision of those who disagree with those standards to change them… or relocate to a different community.

From liberty flows competition, of both businesses and ideas. Success in a competition of ideas requires persuasion, not compulsion. No one who is confident in the power of their ideas should fear the challenge of persuasion, just as no one who believes in the quality of their business fears the competition of the marketplace. Liberty is both powerful and moral. The embrace of liberty is something both halves of the Right can agree they are right about. I think current events prove it’s a mistake to think liberty can survive the attack of collectivism – a powerful illusion with the inherent aggression of a nightmare – without both halves of the Right defending it.

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Guns Or Butter

Friday, November 13, 2009

Some 15,000 Americans died last year because they didn’t have it. As many as five million more experienced a significant reduction in their quality of life, including mental and emotional trauma as well as diminished health, without it. Although large majorities of those Americans fortunate enough to have it are satisfied with what they have, many of the poor who need it most desperately simply cannot afford it. The government already exercises a great deal of control over it. Lives could be saved if we made its purchase mandatory, and subsidized those of limited means, to make ownership universal.

No, not health care. Guns.

Legal gun ownership by law-abiding citizens brings a dramatic reduction in violent crime. The city of Kennesaw, Georgia, took the novel step of passing an ordinance requiring heads of household to keep at least one firearm in their homes, as reported in this article by Chuck Baldwin of Campaign for Liberty. The law went into effect in 1982, and produced 74% and 45% reductions in violent crime over the next two years, respectively. Despite its population roughly tripling over the course of fifteen years, Kennesaw only had three murders during that time, and two of them were committed with knives.

Of course, extrapolating from little Kennesaw to the entire country is impossible, but studies have repeatedly shown that shall-issue and concealed-carry laws bring reductions in violent crime, while draconian gun control laws cause such crimes to skyrocket. For example, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley recently blamed the Fort Hood shootings on “America’s love affair with guns.” As Madison Conservative pointed out in a Twitter exchange, Chicago experienced 32 shootings in a single weekend, back in April, although it has draconian handgun laws. Similar examples are plentiful. Just about every high-crime area has tough gun control laws.

Approached with simple common sense, the effect of carefully trained, law-abiding gun owners on violent crime is not complicated. Decent people with proper firearms training are not magically transformed into wild-eyed homicidal maniacs by the ownership of a gun. They gain the ability to defend themselves against violent assault, and criminals logically respond by launching such attacks less frequently, since they can no longer be assured of finding easy prey.

The contrary liberal position, that absolute gun confiscation would reduce violent crime, is reasonable on its surface… but it disintegrates completely when confronted with the simple fact that disarming criminals is virtually impossible. Even if it could be done, the will to violence gives criminals a pronounced advantage over lawful citizens, when only primitive weapons are involved.

The atrocity at Fort Hood demonstrates, with horrible clarity, what happens when evil men with guns can act with confidence that no one will be shooting back at them. Arming and training the law-abiding citizens of high-crime areas would make them into hard targets, and improve their quality of life at least as much as socialized medicine. It would also be much cheaper – guns and ammunition cost far less than medical equipment and life-saving drugs, and firearms training requires far less education than a medical degree. Unlike socialized medicine, gun ownership is actually authorized – in fact, guaranteed – by the Constitution. Also, unlike medicine, guns are something the government has expertise with. The federal and state governments employ a great many people who know what they’re talking about, when it comes to firearms.

Of course, universal gun ownership and training wouldn’t bring a whole lot of power to the socialists. In fact, it’s just about their worst nightmare. Nothing makes them more nervous than the thought of a few million liberty-loving souls with pistols in one hand, and tea bags in the other. The government would get to spend some money distributing subsidized guns to the poor, but unlike health care, there would be no long-term dependency and control – none of that exhilarating sense that the State owns its citizens, body and soul.

Since guns are probably a non-starter with the Left, how about butter?

All this shrieking about an ever-changing number of uninsured Americans, creeping nervously through their miserable lives in the shadow of the Grim Reaper, is ridiculous when compared to the more serious threat of starvation. Healthy people usually go for years without needing health care, especially when they’re young… but even the most vivacious teenager will die in a matter of days without food.

Food production and distribution are governed by huge agriculture and grocery companies, including the hellish Wal-Mart, the corporate Mordor of the frenzied Left. Americans spend about $500 billion a year on food, including products like milk and soda that cost almost as much per gallon as gasoline does. We’re notoriously sloppy about the kind of food we consume, resulting in obesity, hypertension, and other health issues that place an enormous strain on our health care system. Surely it’s time to confiscate the obscene profits of Big Food, and strictly regulate the diets of Americans, to “promote the general welfare.” The same people liberals count to produce the scary numbers of uninsured Americans they need to sell socialized medicine – the young, the poor, illegal aliens – need “access” to healthy food!

You might object that no one seems to be starving in America. Well, no one is dying for want of medical care, either – hospitals are required to treat the indigent. That doesn’t stop the Left from dancing around the smoking embers of the Constitution and demanding the power to control the health insurance industry. If the government can force you to buy health insurance, why can’t it force you to eat salad instead of bacon burgers? Forcing Americans to eat properly and exercise, under threat of fines and imprisonment, would reduce our national health care expenditures considerably. Reduced demand means reduced prices. It makes a lot more fiscal sense than pouring two or three trillion dollars we don’t have into a bloated national health care system.

The reason there is no significant starvation in America is because the production and delivery of food is highly efficient and innovative. The shelves of grocery stores are bursting with constantly new-and-improved products. Competition is fierce, bringing reduced prices and increased quality. In our grandparents’ day, food was much more expensive – the average family in 1901 spent half its income on food, compared to just over 13% today… and 42% of our food expenses are incurred while eating out. Food is even more important to life than medicine, it is consumed in far greater volume, and its production and distribution are quite complex… but it’s cheap and plentiful, precisely because it is not produced and distributed by Big Government.

Everything we currently do wrong with health care, and will do even worse if the Democrats have their way, is done right with food. It is vastly better to feed the desperately poor by giving them food stamps to spend in a capitalist grocery store, than to shuffle them off to some kind of State-controlled supply dump. It’s not as if no one ever tried to control food production with collectivist politics. The primary result was mass starvation, every single place on Earth it has been tried. Why is anyone foolish enough to think those collectivist policies will work better when applied to health care?

We should embrace our heritage of limited government, show our fellow citizens the respect due to all free men and women, and reserve those fines and jail terms for politicians who betray their oaths of office by proposing ridiculously unconstitutional socialist power grabs. The choice between guns and butter should be yours.

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